Intro: 00:00

Welcome to the You Can’t Take it With You show, where we feature stories around generosity designed to inspire and encourage others to do meaningful things in their communities. Now, here’s your host, Jim Dunlop.

Jim Dunlop: 00:17

Hi, Jim Dunlop here, a wealth advisor and host of the show, where I sit down with people who get it when it comes to generosity. I’m excited to have guests who can give us stories on generosity, to not only inspire our listeners, but to give practical ideas on ways we can give. Today’s guest is Rick Peck. Past guests include Peter Greer, Jim Langley, and Phil Cubeta.

But before we get to Rick, I want to share that this episode is brought to you by Advent Partners. Ready for good. Advent is a financial planning team dedicated to helping you make informed decisions that simplify your financial journey. At Advent Partners, we’re ready for good. Our bold ten year vision to help clients donate $100 million to transform lives through generosity and planning, united by generosity, relationship excellence, authenticity and fun. We empower meaningful lives and lasting community impact. To learn more about Advent Partners and how we can guide your financial success, visit. Readyforgood.com. 

And now Rick Peck. Rick is an independent philanthropy advisor with Richard Peck Consulting, LLC, working with nonprofits, donors, potential donors, and professional advisors. He is also the Founder of The Philanthropy Guy LLC, a leading edge charitable giving resource hub featuring a weekly podcast series broadcasting in over 20 countries around the globe with thousands of downloads to date. He also produces a bi weekly newsletter for nonprofits, donors, and professional advisors, has an interactive website at thephilanthropyguy.com, and offers various asynchronous webinar offerings via his website. Coming in early 2026, a book authored by Rick on the basics of nonprofit fundraising. Rick is a certified financial planning professional, a chartered advisor in philanthropy, a chartered financial consultant. He holds an MBA from Baker College and a B.A. from University of Massachusetts. He is one of the 2164 certified advisors and received his Daylight Advisors Impact Philanthropy Advisor certification. Rick, I’m really excited to talk to you today. Thanks for coming on.

Rick Peck: 02:25

Thank you for having me, Jim. And I’m really excited, I must say, about what Advent Partners is up to with giving away $100 million. It warms my heart.

Jim Dunlop: 02:33

Well thank you. That’s our big, hairy, audacious goal. Would you mind starting off by telling our listeners, giving us a little, maybe three minute autobiography about yourself, Rick?

Rick Peck: 02:45

Sure. I’ll start with saying I was a practicing financial advisor from 1998 to 2005, working with people who were planning for retirement education, insurance, cash reserves, all that stuff. And I enjoyed it very much. And then one day I ended up becoming had an opportunity to become the associate director of gift planning at Dartmouth College, which took a lot of the same skill sets, but just applied them to philanthropy. And that was around 2005.

My wife and I were my wife was working at Dartmouth. She showed me the job. I said, yeah, sure, it’s bequest intentions. It’s charitable gift annuities, charitable remainder trusts, real estate donations. You know, it was really unusual and different, but still related a lot to the skill sets that I have. 

So I said, I’m going to I’m going to jump in, I’m going to do this. And so now for the past 20 years, I’ve been doing charitable giving planning, and I worked at Dartmouth for about 12 years, both with the undergraduate school as well as with the medical school. And then I also had a gig at the same time alongside the medical school. I was working at a local hospital, so I was working on plan giving. As I mentioned, we also worked on major gifts, which were $50,000 or more, and then also principal giving, which were $1 million or more. 

So I did plan giving major gifts, principal giving for both the hospital and the medical school toward the end of my career. And I had a whole team reporting to me. And then in 2017, I became VP for Development and Philanthropy Services at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, which is a statewide community foundation and took a lot of the same skills and moved them over into talking to people about things beyond academia or healthcare, but more like, are you interested in climate change? Are you interested in behavioral health or food scarcity or what have you? And definitely worked with plan giving and then worked with a lot of professional advisors, CPAs, wealth advisors, trust and estates attorneys to try to help them be better at the philanthropic conversation, just like you already are. 

And then in in 2023, early 2023, that’s when I went independent and said, I’m going to take everything that I’ve ever learned, try to turn that into something of value for nonprofits who are trying to raise money, donors who are trying to give away money, and professional advisors who need some coaching. So that’s where I am. That’s my bio.

Jim Dunlop: 05:16

Awesome. Well, I really appreciate sharing that background and kind of your journey to where we are today. And I want to just take a step back though, and ask you, obviously, generosity is a big part of your life and your professional life for over 20 years. What drives your own personal generosity and more importantly, what’s your generosity origin story?

Rick Peck: 05:40

Thing I remember most as far as my origin story is when I was about 11 years old, my father lost his job, he was laid off. And That was really hard because my father was the only breadwinner in the household at that time. My mother worked inside the home, three kids. And and I remember the church that we went to, they gave us they they designated this once a year to one family. They gave us the Thanksgiving turkey.

And, and I remember as a kid thinking, I’m a little bit embarrassed that we’re getting the turkey, but I’m also grateful because it says that the church saw us and they recognized us and they wanted to give back. And so I. That really stuck with me. And it, it just reminded me that when you’re seen, when you have needs and you’re seen people care about you, they want to help you out. That’s very powerful. 

And I think that just carried with me through my life. When I, I, I started to notice when people would take extra time with me, when they didn’t have to and try to guide me or they were generous. My grandfather helped pay my way through my undergraduate education. You know, he didn’t have to do that, but he did and, you know, and things like that. So I’d say that it’s it’s marking, you know, sort of marking times along the way where I noticed that I wasn’t doing this by myself. 

Like if these people weren’t here to help me, that I just wouldn’t be where I am today. And I’ll even say that when my parents died about ten years ago, they died about six months apart. I remember at a very vulnerable time, neighbors and friends came around, they brought food. They were just so supportive. And, and so you just, you know, you just don’t take those things for granted. 

And, and then I guess as it translates into my world now, yes, another way to give is money, but it still comes back from a place of people don’t have to do this. They do it because they care, because they want to. They want to make a difference. And, and that’s just a really powerful thing. So I think that’s, that’s what carries me along a lot of the way.

Jim Dunlop: 07:55

A little bit of background and, and it’s, you know, just the impact of, of something that happened. A very simple thing when you were a young kid has had this ripple effect that leads you to the work that you’re doing today and, and that you’re committed to.

Rick Peck: 08:08

Yeah.

Jim Dunlop: 08:09

I think it would maybe be good if we could talk to the audience a little bit about as we the show about generosity, but what are some recent. Let’s take a step back and what are some recent statistics and trends that you think are worth noting in the area of generosity and philanthropy right now?

Rick Peck: 08:29

So I like to refer to one particular report report called giving USA and Giving you a Say. I like to quote this report because it gives people proper context around donating money. The the statistics are this almost $600 billion was donated in the United States in 2024. That is up $100 billion from two years prior to that. So in 2022, it was around $499 billion.

In 2024, it was just shy of 600 billion. So $100 billion in two years. So I say that because when people think there’s not a lot of money out there being donated, they’re wrong. And some more statistics, $250 billion was the figure inside of donor advised funds just about a year and a half ago. Now, the figure most recent quote was $326 billion in donor advised funds means the money is already there, waiting to be deployed. 

And with private foundations, the figures around $1.6 trillion. So that’s all to say. There’s a lot of money out there that is being earmarked for charitable giving. It shows what I was just talking about. People are charitable. 

People do care. They’re giving money away when they don’t have to. Maybe they’re doing it for the tax advantages. Maybe they’re not. There’s lots of reasons why people give. 

But I think that just comes from a place of. There’s a hopefully an abundance mindset when you give those when you give those statistics, there’s a lot of money out there. That’s mainly for a lot of these nonprofits that say, well, there’s no money out there. I can’t find anybody to donate to us. It’s like, well, you know, they’re donating. 

They may not be donating to you and your organization, but they are donating.

Jim Dunlop: 10:22

But what causes nonprofits to struggle as it relates to fundraising? And, you know, in this context of there’s a lot of generosity floating around in the ether in this country. Why do they struggle?

Rick Peck: 10:34

I think it’s it’s a lot of fundamental work. Honestly, I think if I were to just to sort of paint with a broad brush, a lot of people start a nonprofit because they’re passionate about the work, passionate about the mission, but I’m not sure that they think a lot about the structure, the infrastructure of running, essentially, what is a business? It just happens to be a not for profit. So part of that running of the business is how are you generating revenue and are you considering fundraising or is that part of your revenue stream? So what I find often, and part of what drives me with the work that I do with nonprofits is I don’t think they have that proper infrastructure.

Now, to be fair, they’re not taught what that is. So they’re coming in and doing things that I would call very amateurish. You know, they have a website and they’re asking for cash gifts. And it’s, I mean, it’s, I see this over and over and over and over again when I see websites and I don’t really blame them. But when they, when they say, you know, there’s no donors out there and it’s because you just, they just don’t know what the process is. 

For example, just this morning I met with a A non-profit, and it was our very first meeting as they go into a capital campaign, and we are now building proper infrastructure to raise some serious money, and we don’t even know what that total dollar amount is, but it’s going to be the biggest total revenue stream that they’ve ever received as it relates to fundraising. So we’re doing things like this. We’re creating a case for support. We’re expanding the types of assets that we would ask for beyond cash. We’re going to market differently. 

We’re going to talk to professional advisors about what’s happening. And there might be even a research component that we put in here to say, who are the donors and potential donors most likely to give to your organization? So I would say that there’s just what I gave you. Those are just, you know, 4 or 5 different points. But that’s the type of stuff that if a nonprofit focuses down on these things, they’re going to have different results. 

But if you just do things the way you’ve always done them, then you’re going to be struggling. Like, who’s going to donate to us? How do we find those donors? How come our, you know, marketing materials aren’t as good as theirs? And how come they’re doing so much better than we are over at that nonprofit? 

So, but but so that’s what I think I, I’d like to think that I teach and then I bring others in my peer group to teach and say, now you’re starting to operate like a really strong, high functioning, a fundraising operation. And, and not only will this help you with your short term goals, it’s something that you can continue on long term. People and donors will take you more seriously. They’re obviously more aware of you. And there you have it. 

And so with 2 million nonprofits out there, you do have to be smart about how you remain competitive. Otherwise you are going to be left in the dust. Even though I just mentioned all of that abundance out there, the abundance is going to go toward the organizations that are representing themselves as best they can.

Jim Dunlop: 13:45

And and making that case for themselves.

Rick Peck: 13:47

Yeah, yeah. Just being strong. I mean, there’s, there’s this kind of back and forth I hear, which is to say, you know what, what’s a nonprofit’s obligation? There’s a, there’s a, a term out there that people are talking about called trust based philanthropy, which is essentially saying a donor steps forward and says, I trust that the organization knows how to run itself. I would say, with all due respect to many nonprofits, you could be doing better to represent yourselves.

You you could be doing better as an organization to come back to that donor and say, we really have our act together. We really can can say with certainty where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going, how much we need, what we’re going to do with it, what the impact is going to look like. I do feel like that’s an obligation of the nonprofit to be able to do that. And if they’re not doing that, yes, the donor’s going to hopefully trust you. But at the end of the day, they’re going to be like, am I going to throw good money after bad? 

Or am I going to give you some serious money because I know you’re going to take it and you’re going to be impactful with it. I mean, I think that is an obligation of the nonprofit to, to basically step up and do that. Otherwise, it’s this kind of could be a tenuous relationship between the nonprofit and the donor, which is the donor saying, I really want to like you. I really want to give you a lot of money. But I don’t know, you know, I don’t. 

Are you going to be around next year? I mean, it’s just I love your mission, but are you financially sustainable? You know, I mean, I think that goes on in in, in donor’s minds.

Jim Dunlop: 15:16

So so pivoting on that, just that idea of donors, you know, you talk about giving good advice to nonprofits to be strategic in how they ask for money. How do you help? Or why would what kind of help do donors need as they think about giving their money away?

Rick Peck: 15:35

I think donors, there’s also a systematic approach to work with donors. First of all. It’s not often that somebody would sit down with somebody and say, let’s just talk about your values. Let’s just because they may say, well, I don’t know. I mean, I think I know what my values are, but now that you’re asking me, I’m not sure if I could write down these things.

So there are exercises you can do with donors and families to say, let’s flesh out. Let’s talk about a lot of different values. You choose the ones that are most important to you and your family. Then we move into issue areas. We’ll say, what issues do you care about? 

Is it food scarcity? Is it climate change? Is it loneliness? Is it taking care of the elderly? What is it that matters to you? 

So we’re we’re coming up with your values and we’re talking about your issue areas. And then we start to move into how do you feel about money? I mean, did you grow up with nothing? Did you grow up with a lot? How does that translate into how you think about money today? 

And I’m not saying that I’m going to get into absolute psychology around it, but you do want to have a little bit of that perspective when you’re working with donors, because otherwise you just don’t know how they’re thinking about that. Then I would say moving into working with their family saying, are you going to bring your kids into this conversation? You’re going to bring your grandkids into this conversation. So I’d say that’s more of like the strategic level thinking. Then we move into what I would call more tactical work, which is to say, okay, now what assets do you have? 

What do you have? Real estate? Do you have stocks? Do you have bonds? Do you have life insurance? 

Do you have cryptocurrency? Do you have retirement plans? Do you have donor advised funds? Like what do you already have? And then moving into kind of parlaying that into charitable giving vehicles and saying, here’s how a charitable remainder trust works, here’s how a private foundation works, and so on. 

And then what nonprofits do you think you want to donate to based on all the things we just talked about? So I would say that strategic level work combined with the tactical level work, there’s a process and a flow to that. And by the time you get to the deployment stage, hopefully the donors say, yeah, this is really helpful and it’s giving me a proper frame in ways that I probably wouldn’t have thought about before, because I was just kind of out there giving away money, not knowing if it’s enough too much. AM I giving to the right amount of organizations? AM I giving to too few? 

I don’t have any context. So the the work I just described with individuals and families just helps to say there is a formula for this, and then we can customize it so that it’s right for you.

Jim Dunlop: 18:12

You know, Rick, I love the work that you’re doing because you work with nonprofits, you work with donors, but then you also work with professional advisors, not unlike myself. What role does CPAs and wealth advisors play or even trust and estate attorneys, as you think about all this stuff, how do you come alongside them?

Rick Peck: 18:31

Well, I they’re so close to their clients and they are trusted advisors and they’re obviously dealing with a lot of money. I would be remiss in my job if I didn’t try to continuously reach out to them and say, hey, CPAs, what do you need to know when you’re talking to your clients about saving money on taxes or tax planning? Do you talk about charitable giving? If so, what do you talk about and what do you need to know? What do you want to know?

I have tons of things I can talk to you about. What would you like to learn? And if you don’t know, I’ll just give you some primers. And I go out onto platforms like CPA Academy, and I speak to several, sometimes hundreds of, of CPAs at a time who are looking for CE credits. And then they come and they learn about charitable giving, or I go to wealth advisors and do the same thing. 

I say, what do you need to know? Here’s, here’s how donor advised funds work. That seems to be a hot trend with a lot of wealth advisors these days. A lot of my clients are asking me about donor advised funds. How do how do they work? 

And one guy said, I didn’t know how a donor advised fund worked. And I, and I think I lost a client or I think I lost a potential client. So that motivator for them is if I’m not on top of this charitable giving stuff, I might be left out in the cold. And then with Trust and estates attorneys, you could argue that they’re dealing with sometimes some of the biggest money, because these are people at the end of their lives who are trying to deploy money out into different places, and they’re trying to figure out how much do I give to what is it restricted, unrestricted, how how do I do this? I talked to a couple introduced to me by a trust and estates attorney, and they were probably dealing with around $23 million that they’re trying to figure out how to deploy for charitable purposes, strictly for charitable purposes. 

And so yeah, and then family offices are also a group that I’m starting to become more acquainted with as far as what they’re, what they’re thinking about, what they, what their clients need to know about. So I think that my background as a CFP and a chfc brings me to the table as, say, people say they take me seriously. And then I say, and let me tell you all the things you probably don’t know or should know. And then if you need me or people like me, I’m here to help you out. So that that’s a big driver for me. 

I think there’s a lot of missed opportunity with a lot of professional advisors who are stumbling into the conversation. Maybe they’re a bit blindsided by it. By the way, it’s not lost on their clients. The clients sometimes will be like, my advisor did not know anything about this, and now I don’t even know who to go to. I’m not sure who I should talk to about it. 

Is this, you know, is this something I need to seek out myself, or is this something that maybe somebody can introduce me to the right people? So I do feel some sort of an obligation, you know, to get out there myself, not only to teach, but also to say, let me connect the dots for you because these are big decisions. People are making the great wealth transfer. You know, there could be 12 billion, $12 trillion actually is the figure that they’re using that could go to that could be earmarked for charitable purposes over the next 2030 years if advisors are not on top of this, you know, not bad things could happen. You know, there could be some things that just are unintended consequences of poor planning. 

And and there you have it. So that’s why I try to reach out to all those different audiences.

Jim Dunlop: 21:55

You know, at the beginning of the show, we had talked about you when you were talking a little bit about some of the statistics you had said, I think if I wrote this down correctly, $326 billion in donor advised funds. Tell us, tell our listeners who might not be familiar, what is a donor advised fund? How does it work? And, and how does that compare to, say, a private foundation as well?

Rick Peck: 22:17

Yeah. Thank you. So I would say starting like this, imagine yourself you’re writing, say, 15 different checks at the end of the year to different nonprofits. And you say one day, you know what? This is a lot of work.

I think what I’d like to do is set up something else. And so that’s where a donor advised fund comes into play. It’s like, all right, now it’s maybe it’s your new charitable checkbook. You you put all of your money into the donor advised fund. You then invest the money with a firm. 

So there’s over 1100 donor advised fund sponsors out there. So there’s a lot of people leaning into that space. So anyway, you choose one could be fidelity, could be DAF giving 360 Vanguard National Philanthropic Trust, a lot of these organizations, Dartmouth College that I mentioned, they have a donor advised fund. So you choose whatever sponsor you want and many of them have a threshold, but some of them, like fidelity, have no threshold. It’s a $0 threshold. 

So you put money in to the donor advised fund. You invest the money into a portfolio. It could be a conservative portfolio. It could be an aggressive portfolio. Whatever it is that’s good for you, then you as often as you like, make a grant recommendation, you say, okay, I’m ready to make a gift to ABC Charity. 

I’m going to put the order in to the donor advised fund sponsor, and they’re going to deploy the money in the form of a grant. So you could place 15 different requests in all at once. Instead of writing those 15 checks at the end of the year, you just say, I’m going to place an order for 15 requests of grants to go out to these nonprofits. And the reason they’re called donor advised funds is because at the end of the day, the donor advised fund sponsor is technically in charge and can actually refuse a request from a donor who’s making that advising or requesting that grant. But most of the time that the answer is yes. 

The donor advised fund sponsor will allow that unless there’s some sort of a fiscal an issue around, it’s not a 501 C three or there’s some sort of an issue. Or maybe in some situations, there’s a philosophical discussion around philosophical discussion around whether or not they should deploy the money to that organization because maybe it’s not in line like with the community foundation, it’s not in line with the community foundation’s values. So they’d say, we think that’s a hate organization or a harm organization. So we’re not really going to back that. You’re going to have to make that grant through somebody else, but not us. 

But we’ll maybe do 98, 98% of the other grants you want, but some of these others, we won’t do so. So back to the statistics. These donor advised funds are growing fast and furious. I mean, not that long ago there were only a million, only a million accounts. And now we’re I think it’s 3.5 million accounts, donor advised funds. 

And it’s just growing and growing and growing because people just love the idea that they can consolidate all this money into one place, and they can also get a tax deduction at the time that they put the money in. So you, you, what you have, you have actually two different decisions that you’re making with the donor advised funds. When am I going to put money into it? And then when am I going to deploy money out of it? Where if you’re writing a check to a nonprofit at the time you’re releasing the money, you’re actually making the donation, obviously, but with a donor advised fund, you’re like, I’m going to put money in, I’m going to pause, and then I’m going to figure out who do I want to deploy the money to? 

Then I’ll make the recommendation to the donor advised fund sponsor, and then the donor advised fund sponsor will deploy the grant. So. So now a compared to a private foundation, there are a lot easier to set up. They’re usually less expensive, a lot less work. And pound for pound, most people would say, I think the donor advised fund is a better option for me unless I want to pay staff or I want to use a. 

You can use private foundations in very specific ways and. But if you. If you don’t need all of that, then the donor advised fund might be most appropriate. And to be fair, some people will have a private foundation and a donor advised fund, and then they’ll just figure out which ones work best for them, depending on the the gift they’re trying to make. So I would say that the trend is more, given this one particular organization, foundation source, I’ll name them. 

They were very much known for private foundation work. And now they’re leaning more into the donor advised fund work as well, because they see that both are popular, both. And the donor advised funds are rising in popularity. So that’s all to say. The trends for donor advised funds just keep going up and up and up as far as their popularity. 

And, and there’s a lot of service providers out there trying to accommodate for that.

Jim Dunlop: 27:08

Very good. So, you know, you have a broad knowledge and exposure to the, I’ll call it, the philanthropic ecosystem, working with donors, working with nonprofits, working with professional advisors, and thinking about all the tools that fit in that space. If you had three wishes for the philanthropic ecosystem, what would they be? Rick?

Rick Peck: 27:32

Well, I’ll use my three audiences, three wishes for the three different audience types with non-profits. I wish that they would come and get advice as soon as possible. Don’t wait. By wasting time waiting and waiting, it’s only going to harm your organization. That’s what I would say.

Just seek out help and take action on the help. I wish for that with donors. I wish for more immediacy. There’s what I see with a lot of donors is they’re also waiting. Nonprofits need the money now. 

They know they need to raise more money, but they still wait to get advice with donors. It feels like there’s less immediacy, like we’ll get around to it when we get around to it. Yeah, I know we need to think about that, but we’ll get to it eventually. So I, I hope for donors that they realize non-profits do need you now, so please continue to make grants out now or make contributions out into the world now and then. I would say with professional advisors, it’s kind of like the same theme in some ways. 

Don’t wait. Learn as much as you can about charitable giving. Your clients are suffering for your lack of knowledge. It may not be obvious, but eventually everyone will come to realize. We probably should have been talking about this stuff before, and we should. 

We should have been playing a little bit more specificity to our plans and so on. So I guess in the end, for all three audiences, my wish is is the same take action. Don’t wait. Learn about these things. Get to know them. 

It’s not going away. It’s in fact, it’s only getting bigger and bigger and bigger. My prediction is in the next 5 to 10 years, even though we’re talking about it right now, and some people are thinking, yeah, maybe I should do that. I think it’s going to be much more in people’s lips and on their minds. They’re going to go, yeah, this is big. 

Like charitable giving is really, really big in the United States, if not the world. I feel like I’m running to catch up on a lot of the terminology and, and ideas and, and options. So I, that’s what I would say waiting is, is not helping anybody.

Jim Dunlop: 29:45

I really love this idea of immediacy. I often work with clients who will say or take the mentality, look, I, I have this money here and I’m not going to need it. So when I die or I don’t think I’m going to need it when I die, it’s going to go to this cause my church, my college, whatever that I feel strongly about. And, and I, I, I like to challenge a little say, why are we waiting if we know that this money is going to go to them, why not do it now and get to have a front row seat to the organization, leveraging it and using that gift? I get sometimes, you know, trying to get people out of that scarcity mentality of, well, I might need it.

Most of the time they don’t or won’t. And I think as planners, we can help show that to them that, hey, you know, you’re, you’re in good shape. You’re not going to need this. Let’s not wait. You can’t take it with you in the name of our show is yeah, part comes for that. 

But I really like that idea of the immediacy.

Rick Peck: 30:46

Well, I appreciate you saying that too, because I feel like people like you can give the clients the confidence to say this isn’t just, oh, you know, Jim thinks that we might not need it. Jim’s done the analysis. He’s looked at the war. He’s looked at all the data. And he said, you know, all things considered, it would be hard to imagine you would run out of money even if you gave this money away.

I mean, I will say one valid concern that donors will have is they’ll say, well, I don’t have long term care insurance. So therefore I might go in to a nursing home or an assisted living facility, and I might need it. And I never push back on that. I go. You’re right, you might. 

But if they have long term care insurance, you can say, well, you have that. So if you think that that’s going to happen to you or you know, if fate is such that it does, you’ve protected yourself in that way. So in that way, you know that if you need expenses associated with that, you’ve covered it. And that could be the case. If you talk about life insurance or disability insurance or other types of insurance, like you’ve you’ve mitigated that risk. 

So that’s valid. But I would say that when the whole analysis is done, if there’s if the clients still like, well, I’m not sure that’s where people like you and other advisors come in and say, I’m telling you, I’ve worked with a lot of clients and you can afford to do this. You are able to do this, you are still going to be okay. And guess what? Your nonprofit is going to be very much benefiting from you giving this to them. 

It could be a a substantive gift. It could be part of a capital campaign that they’re in. And you will have made such a big difference by giving them that money now. Well, you’re also going to be fine for the future. So it’s the best of both worlds.

Jim Dunlop: 32:27

Yeah. You know, I’ve been doing this work for 23 years. I’ve yet to find somebody that made a significant gift and then regretted it or ran out of money later. It just it hasn’t happened.

Rick Peck: 32:39

That’s good to know.

Jim Dunlop: 32:40

Yeah. And maybe that’s just one data point in a sea of them. But I like to say to clients, I have yet to say have somebody on their deathbed or, or something like that going, gosh, I wish I hadn’t made that big gift. So yeah, it’s it brings a lot of joy now. And, and, and, and our job as advisors is to not let you put yourself at risk.

So we want to be thoughtful about that giving, but not in a way that’s going to impoverish your family or in some way.

Rick Peck: 33:12

So yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I have to say what I find refreshing about what you do, Jim, is that I have heard the opposite with advisors. Sometimes wealth advisors will actually tell people, and, you know, I’m not going to judge whether this is valid or not, but they will put the fear of God in some of these people and say, oh, no, you can’t give any money to that institution. And so that we used to see this sometimes with our non-profits, they would the, the client would come and say, yeah, my advisor says, I can’t do it. And you go, all right.

But then you start to think, well, in what context is this in? So it was almost felt like we weren’t partnering with the advisor. The advisor was almost viewing us as a threat, saying, oh, well, you start giving money to them. Then I start to lose assets under management. And I’m, you know, that’s not good for me. 

I’m not going to say that that’s exactly what these advisors were thinking. But we started to see a little bit of a trend of that with some advisors. So it’s refreshing to hear you say, no, I’m the opposite. I’m, I’m trying to encourage people to give whenever they can because most of the time, if not all of the time, they can afford it and it’s going to be okay.

Jim Dunlop: 34:22

Absolutely. Well, Rick, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today. And I do have one final question for you. But before I get to that, I want to point our listeners to your website. If you want to learn more about the work that Rick’s doing, he is you can find him at thephilanthropyguy.com.

He’s on Instagram. He is on Facebook. He is on LinkedIn. He is on YouTube. Just look for The Philanthropy Guy on all those sites. 

So, Rick, my last question is if you could share some wisdom or advice on a billboard where you’re going to reach a large, larger audience, what would your message be?

Rick Peck: 34:59

It would be give back or give what you can in whatever way you can. And I know that’s a paraphrase of a of a quote out there. But but you, you have the ability to give do what you can with your time, any talents that you have, any money that you have, any connections that you can make for people? Any testimonials you can give to people or quotes. Whatever you can do.

Try to do that because it does make a difference.

Jim Dunlop: 35:31

I really appreciate it. And and actually, I’m going to I lied. I want to ask one more question. Often in, in the areas of philanthropy, we often hear people talk about the three T’s. You just you triggered me here.

But I know you like to talk about the five T’s. Could you tell our listeners what those five T’s are?

Rick Peck: 35:52

Yeah. So time is, I think of you can be I almost think of time as somewhat unskilled labor. Like I could put up flyers, I could post something on social media, I could lift boxes, I could help people in ways that, you know, most anyone might be able to do. Talent is like I serve as a board member or I serve as an advisory team member. I bring something, I’m a marketing expert.

I’m a financial expert. I’m an expert in fundraising, raising whatever it is, I can bring that to the table. I can be helpful. Treasure is money. So whatever money makes sense and I will break that down and say treasure could be an annual gift to your favorite institution. 

It could be a major or a principal gift during a capital campaign, or it could be a bequest intention. And we call that the three legged stool within the treasure category. Ties is, I think, an underrepresented area. Most people don’t realize how many people they know and how influential they can be. If it’s simply like, you know, Jim, you reach out to somebody and say, hey, I would like you to consider this. 

It’s like, okay, because I know you, Jim. I will consider that like, I respect you and I like you and I want to help you. So I don’t know that a lot of people think about the connectivity that they have, the able that they’re able to make warm introductions between one person and another and and the power that can have the power of suggestion, really. And then the last testimony, I mean, a quote or a video or something like that, where you just say, you know, we see it all the time with like Google reviews and things like that. They do make a difference. 

I mean, when people say, would you, would you step in and say something nice about us? If you genuinely feel like they were helpful to you, do it. Just take the five minutes and put the quote in, you know, a book that somebody writes, give a review, you know, whatever you can do to be helpful, that’s testimony. And so time, talent, treasure ties and testimony are the five T’s that I talk about often because it’s just different ways that people can contribute. Sometimes they can do just one and some, and many times they can do many more than just one.

Jim Dunlop: 38:08

Well, Rick, thank you, I like that. I think that’s a good note to end on. I really like that that idea and the visual of the five T’s. So thank you so much for being with us, Rick. I’ve appreciated all you’ve had to share today.

Rick Peck: 38:22

Thank you Jim. Thanks for having me. And thank you for what you’re doing in promoting the fact that you can’t take it with you. Just do as much as you can now.

Jim Dunlop: 38:28

All right. Thanks.

Outro: 38:31

Thanks for joining us. To hear stories of generosity that remind us that you can’t take it with you. Visit our site at canttakeitwithyou.com for more details on today’s episode and to subscribe to future shows.

Disclosure: 38:49

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