Our Program
9:30 a.m. Eleven Steps Your Charity Can Take This Year for Planned Giving Success
There are steps every charity can immediately take to begin integrating planned gift ideas and appeals into its overall development program, and to introduce planned giving concepts to nearly all of its prospects. This session will cover eleven no- or low- cost steps, both practical and doable for staff, Board members and volunteers to establish and sustain proactive gift planning and to set activity-based goals in this critical aspect of fundraising. Both new and existing programs will benefit from this presentation that will include a description of simpler gift options in the materials.
10:50 a.m. Cues and Clues: What Prospects and Clients Tell You and What You Need to Say, Then
Donors, prospects and clients tell you everything you need to know—if you only listen. This session will identify many impediments to giving those individuals are mentioning, like their asset concerns and family situation, and provide a script for your response then, in real time, suggesting a gift idea that could address that concern. Development’s role extends beyond the nonprofit’s need for the gift, we should make practical suggestions about how that donor could make a gift using assets not cash while furthering their goals. And for clients, to ensure their charitable plans are the smartest for them. Development’s goal is to promote a gift conversation between many individuals and a person who can talk about often simple gift plans funded at the right life stage, that address those perceived impediments to giving, ethical, pragmatic, repeatable.
Our Presenter
Pamela Jones Davidson, J.D., is President of Davidson Gift Design in Bloomington, Indiana, a consulting firm specializing in gift planning, planned giving program design and implementation, and training. She is also a Senior Vice President for Thompson & Associates, offering estate planning services to nonprofits; she has earned its FCEP designation. Before forming her own company in 1999, she was a charitable gift planner and consultant for three years with Laura Hansen Dean and Associates in Indianapolis. From 1985 through 1996, she was with Indiana University Foundation, leaving that organization as its Executive Director of Planned Giving and Associate Counsel, and quadrupling its planned gift expectancies under her directorship.
Davidson received her undergraduate degree from Indiana University in 1975, and graduated magna cum laude and top 10% from the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis in 1979. She has previously been an examiner in the Estate and Gift Tax Division of the Internal Revenue Service, and later practiced business, corporate and probate law with an Indianapolis law firm before joining the nonprofit sector in 1985.
She was the 1999 President of the National Committee on Planned Giving (now the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners, “NACGP”), and served NCPG in various capacities during her six years on the Board, in 1995 as Education Chair, in 1996 as Secretary, and as President Elect in 1998. She served as NCPG’s 2000 Nominating Committee Chair and as a past member and chair of its Ethics Committee. She is a member of NACGP’s Leadership Institute, and in 2018, was inducted in the second year to its Hall of Fame.
Davidson has been on the Editorial Board of the Planned Giving Design Center, and has served as faculty of The College of William and Mary National Planned Giving Institute. She is a past board member and past treasurer of the Indiana Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives (now, Association of Fundraising Professionals, “AFP”), and is a past board member and president of the Planned Giving Group of Indiana. She is a past president of the Network of Career Women, a Leadership Bloomington alumna, and has served on many nonprofit Boards and development committees of local charities. She serves on the Community Advisory Board (“CAB”) of her local public television station and is a member of APTS (America’s Public Television Stations) (Lay) Leadership Council; she has served her local public radio station on its CAB too.
Over her long career, Davidson has made countless presentations throughout Indiana and nationally to development professionals including leadership, planned giving councils, estate and tax attorneys, accountants and financial planners, and to prospects and donors about gift planning and charitable giving techniques. She is known for her motivational and empowering messages stated in practical and pragmatic terms about gift planning advantages and options that can benefit individuals, families and valued charities all, the “how to do smartly what you already want to do,” that prompts a gift conversation.
Thanks to our Sponsors!


Our Schedule and Program
- 9:00 a.m. Registration Begins/Member Networking
- 9:30 a.m. Opening Session: Eleven Steps Your Charity Can Take This Year for Planned Giving Success
- 10:30 a.m. Beverage Break
- 10:50 a.m. Second Session: Cues and Clues: What Prospects and Clients Tell You and What You Need to Say, Then
- 11:40 a.m. Lunch and Networking
- 12:45 p.m. Adjourn
Registration Fees
- There is no fee for members to attend, though they should register in advance (members should be logged-in to access the member rate).
- The nonmember fee is $150.00. Nonmembers can also join now and then register at no additional cost.