Tuesday, September 14, 2021

The Pandemic and Philanthropy — What have we learned and where do we go from here?

It has been well over a year since the world began to grapple with the global COVID-19 pandemic. Now that widespread vaccination campaigns are underway and numbers of cases and deaths are declining in many areas of the country, the nonprofit sector is beginning to look to the future. The consensus of commentators is that the Post-COVID world will present a new normal that will no doubt be different in many ways from the past. Charitable gift planning will be no exception. COVID has accelerated many pre-existing trends, including increased competition, the decline in numbers of traditional estate gift donors, and unprecedented reductions in long-standing charitable tax incentives. This session will explore a number of exciting opportunities to help donors make gifts of a lifetime in ways that provide immediate or short term funding for charitable purposes, while also meeting personal financial goals in ways they might never have thought possible.

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This program has been approved for 1.5 CFRE credits.

 

 

Speaker: Robert F. Sharpe, Jr., CEO, Encore
Speaker Bio: Robert F. Sharpe, Jr. is CEO of Encore, a leading philanthropic management consulting firm. He is a nationally recognized leader and authority in the field of philanthropy. During more than three decades of service to thousands of America’s nonprofits, he has consulted with educational, health, social service, arts and religious organizations and institutions in the planning and implementation of their major, planned gift and endowment development efforts.

An honors graduate of Vanderbilt University and Cornell Law School, he served as a development officer for a liberal arts college prior to practicing law with a major law firm specializing in taxation and estate planning.

Robert has been a pioneer in the area of “blended gifts” beginning in 1995 when he coined the term as part of a presentation at the national conference of the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners (CGP).

Robert is chair of the philanthropy editorial board of Trusts & Estates magazine and co-author of the CGP Model Standards of Gift Valuation. He has served on the board of Giving USA and on a number of strategic task forces for the CGP. He currently serves as an Advisory Council member for the Alliance for Charitable Reform in its efforts to preserve and expand favorable tax treatment for charitable gifts.

Among other publications, his remarks have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Forbes, Smart Money, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Trusts & Estates and Kiplinger’s.

He is a sought-after speaker at local and national gatherings of fundraising executives, financial officers and others. He is a recipient of the CASE Crystal Apple award for excellence in teaching and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Philanthropic Planning Group of Greater New York, the David M. Donaldson Distinguished Service award from the Planned Giving Group of New England and has been inducted to the CGA Gift Planning Hall of Fame.