Philanthropy Front and Center-Atlanta

2008 Slate 60 List of Top Philanthropists Released

Slate magazine released its annual list of the largest U.S. charitable contributions on Monday.  The Slate 60, now in its thirteenth year, tracks the largest philanthropic donations and pledges from American individuals. This list is compiled each year in cooperation with the Chronicle of Philanthropy. 

Topping the Slate 60 for 2008 were bequests from the late Leona Helmsley ($5.2 billion) and the late James LeVoy Sorenson ($4.5 billion).  Visit the Slate web site to read the full article, to view biographies of the donors, or to see lists for past years.  

Slate's Rachael Larimore will be taking questions about the list today from 2:30 to 3:30pm (EST) on Washingtonpost.com.

Interested in learning how to cultivate individual donors for your organization? See the resources listed in our FAQ on the topic, or check out our Reference Guide for Researching Individual Donors. 

To find books, articles, and other resources on donor cultivation, you can search our Catalog of Nonprofit Literature (CNL) for the subjects "Fundraising--donor relations", "Fundraising--individual solicitation", "Individual giving", or "Philanthropists", or try the term "donor cultivation" in the keyword field.

Stephen Sherman, Reference Librarian, Foundation Center-Atlanta

LEAVE A LEGACY® Georgia Helps to Develop Planned Giving Programs

The Georgia Planned Giving Council  (GPGC) recently met here at the Foundation Center. GPGC serves the community by facilitating responsible gift planning and is the state-wide affiliate of the National Committee on Planned Giving (NCPG).

NCPG and GPGC are professional associations for people whose work includes developing, marketing, and administering charitable planned gifts. Charitable gift planning is the process of cultivating, designing, facilitating, and stewarding gifts to charitable organizations. The terms "planned giving", "deferred giving", and "gift planning" are often used synonymously, and, for most purposes, have the same meaning.

The main topic of discussion was LEAVE A LEGACY® Georgia, which is a local public awareness effort to promote charitable planned giving. As an initiative of the Georgia Planned Giving Council and the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Georgia Chapter, LEAVE A LEGACY®  was created to work with local charitable organizations in encouraging individuals to make charitable bequests.

It also provides speakers, tools, and resources to help charities, donors, and advisors develop their own planned giving programs. For more information about these organizations, please check their web sites.

Our library receives NCPG’s quarterly publication, The Journal of Gift Planning, and we have several books and articles on this subject, for example:

• Stelter, Larry. How to Raise Planned Gifts By Mail. Medfield, MA: Emerson & Church. 2008. 102 p. Call Number: 730 STE.

• Finney, Cathy. "A Lapsed Attempt: Are You Going Dark on Your Donors?" NonProfit Times vol. 21 (15 January 2007) p. 10.

• Hopkins, Bruce R. Charitable Giving Law Made Easy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. 2007. xi, 356 p. Call Number: 954 HOP.

To see more titles, do a Subject search for "Planned giving" in Catalog of Nonprofit Literature, our library catalog.

Submitted by Joanne Kepics, Regional Training Coordinator, Foundation Center-Atlanta