OK, this is for all of my adoring fans out there; yes, both of you.  I’m going to keep saying this until someone kills me dead or puts me on a much-deserved pedestal and throws a parade in my honor and elects me to sainthood and makes me king of the world and declares there is no one anywhere smarter than I and…oh, sorry, got carried away.

If anything comes forth from this blog, I hope it’s this: that NPO’s stop cowering from their shadows and do something, anything financially pro-active.

By that I mean please evaluate my idea for their donors converting reverse mortgages into gift annuities.  Or another great idea; (from Stephanie Buckley at Pepperdine) converting life estates into gift annuities.

NPO’s are uniquely positioned to offer an incredible service to their donors: gift annuities from real estate transactions.  These are times in which leadership will be immediately seen and appreciated; these are times when NPO leaders need to stand up and say, “We may have an answer.”  Not every NPO will see this as an attractive funding mechanism, but as I’ve disclosed before, even if 99% of this market says “no”, then “only” $20 billion will be put to use.  “Only” $20 billion.  That’s billion with a “b”.

Folks, the process, products, and procedures all exist now.  Nothing has to be invented or legislated or dreamed up.  Nothing.

But Steffan, you wild-eyed capitalist tool, you; NPO’s don’t take risks and don’t like to gamble with new ideas and policies.  Then go talk to all the NPO’s that lost money with Bernie Madoff or were ripped off by an unsupervised bookeeper. 

THIS IS EXACTLY THE RIGHT TIME TO LOOK AT NEW IDEAS AND POLICIES…because…THE OLD WAYS AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH ANYMORE!

True leadership is defined by a willingness to use past and present information and experience to shape a better future.  We don’t have crystal balls to gaze into, but we do know what doesn’t work anymore.  And we do know that if we don’t change and at least explore other methods, we will go the way of the T-Rex and Burger Chef (see first or second post).

Try this; please, please, please try this.  There is nothing illegal or immoral or unethical about this proposal.  There is due diligence to perform, but you did that before you gave $10 million to Madoff, right?  At least do that much, and I believe you will pleasantly surprised.  By the way, I wrote this up in the October 2007 issue of “FundRaising Success” magazine.  Check it out.