Evaluation frameworks and methodologies

Planned giving, simply put, is the bequeathing of certain funds and/or non-cash assets to a charitable or non-profit organization upon ones death, typically as line items in a persons will and set up with their attorney or other executor (Fritz 2010). There are several significant advantages and disadvantages to planned giving for charitable and non-profit organizations. The chief disadvantage to planned giving is that the funds bequeathed by the donor are not immediately available, nor is there any guaranteed timeline or deadline for the receipt of these funds. Advantages to planned giving, however, include the ability for the organization receiving the donated funds to plan on these future acquisitions in their long-term operations; even though they cannot count on receiving these funds at a specific time, and thus program-specific planning is not truly possible with donations received from planned giving, long-term viability and operational capacity -- essentially fiscal security -- is provided by planned giving more so than by traditional donations.

Given these advantages and disadvantages to planned giving, it can be difficult to determine whether or not planned giving is truly in a non-profit organization's best interests. On balance, however, the advantages to planned giving far outweigh the disadvantages. Especially given the current economic climate, long-term financial stability and security is a highly important asset for any organization, particularly those that depend on the financial security and the resulting largesse of other individuals. In addition, organizations can use the significant tax advantages to planned giving as a marketing tactic to increase the long-term revenue of the organization and increasing the benefit of donations to the donors, as well. This makes planned giving an excellent choice for any non-profit.

Evaluation Plan

A proper evaluation plan is essential to the success of any non-profit organization for several reasons. Ensuring the that the organization is allocating its resources effectively and achieving the goals and objectives to which it is purposed not only keeps the organization effectively on course, but in addition the greater efficacy with which the organization is able to demonstrate its success, the greater its ability to attract donors and donations. Because of this, evaluation questions should be directed primarily at determining the degree to which an organization has achieved its goals and has proven itself to be cost effective in its achievements. This will present an attraction to donors as well as maintaining tight control over the operations of any given organization. The use of an outside consultant is not necessary for most evaluation purposes and would most likely result in an additional cash burden to any organization, and is therefore not recommended. Internal evaluations can be published in full, including the methodologies and raw data employed and gathered during an evaluation, and this would suffice in demonstrating the objectivity and rigor of the evaluation, which would serve just as well in relation to donors as an external evaluation.