Tuesday, October 5, 2010

2010 Practical Planned Giving Conference (PPGC) in Chicago - A Great Success!

Over 400 Crescendo friends attended our Seventh Annual Practical Planned Giving Conference on September 27 – 28 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center in Chicago. It was a great opportunity to hear leading presenters on the most relevant, cutting-edge topics in planned giving. With two full days, six tracks and 48 sessions, this event was a great success!

The theme of the conference this year was New Decade Donors: The Road Ahead. Keynote speakers Jay Love, CEO of Social Solutions, and Lani Starkey, Director of Estate and Gift Planning at the University of Hawaii Foundation, discussed trends and strategies for the decade ahead to a packed luncheon audience.

Many attended sessions in the Art of the Ask track to learn new ways to ask for gifts with proven ask strategies from Steve Marken, Robert Mitchell, Dan Garrett and Amanda Ferrari. Our Property MegaGifts track featured top-notch speakers Jerry McCoy, Tom Ray, Erik Dryburgh and Bryan Clontz. The Major and Planned Gifts track was taught by leading experts Jay Love, Marshall Howard, Lani Starkey and Charles Schultz. We also brought back the popular sessions on eMarketing, Fundamentals and Gift Annuities with faculty including Gene Christian, Cam Kelly, Jim Soft, Bob Rock, Lewis von Herrmann and more.

In addition to the great line-up of PPGC speakers and presentations, the 2010 GiftLegacy award winners were named. The Best Website award was presented to the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Foundation, Best Literature award went to Baylor University, and Best Video Greeting was given to Darci Cain at Kansas State University Foundation.

The top award for 2010 eMarketer of the Year was accepted by Glenn Pittsford, Texas A& M University Foundation, who raised over $100 Million in gifts over the past two years using Crescendo’s GiftLegacy eMarketing System. You will want to check out our post PPGC website at www.Practicalpgc.com for video highlights of this memorable conference.

We look forward to seeing you at next year’s conference. Please mark your calendar and plan to join us for PPGC 2011 September 26 – 27 in San Diego, California.