Welcome back, in the last lesson, you learned to build strong relationships between teams that work together in planned giving administration. In this lesson, we'll focus on training staff and volunteers working in planned giving. After this lesson you'll be able to: discuss technical advice needed to provide training for staff and volunteers, identify where to find the body of knowledge your staff and volunteers should know, explain different levels of training needed for staff versus volunteers. Let's get started. In planned giving, you can accomplish much more if you train your staff and volunteers to assist you. However, they must be well trained according to their level of responsibility and involvement. Here's why training is so important to your success. Planned giving is all about educating a population about its benefits and rewards. There are a lot of people who can benefit in only a limited number of staff. The more staff members and volunteers you can train the better. These volunteers can serve an extension of the plan giving team or simply as advocates. Three primary groups need to be well trained: your development personnel or staff, your board of trustees, and your volunteers. There are similarities in the training they need and there are some distinctions. Let's start with a basic training that is essential for all these groups. This includes: an overview of planned giving options, helping them understand planned giving vehicles and how they may apply in particular situations, as well as, how to identify the appropriate vehicle for a specific donor. Whether you're training a volunteer, a member of your board of trustees, or someone on your development staff, they should understand and be conversant in these basics. The basic knowledge you will share with these volunteers and staff is the same as the content you learned in module two of this course. You may want to revisit the content thinking of how you would pass it along to those you are seeking to train. Much of the technical advice they would need is in that content. Perhaps you could use that as a guideline for the content you want to pass along so that your volunteers have access to the resources and knowledge that should become a shared knowledge bank for anyone working with you in planned giving. Next, let's address the training that would be specific to each of these groups. Let's start with volunteers. In addition to the basics all groups need, you should train your volunteers to: know how to introduce the topic of planned giving and spread the word, know how to encourage interest, and to know when to involve staff. Now, let's consider training specific to your board of trustees, in addition to the basics all groups need, you should train your board of trustees to: know how powerful their endorsement is to encouraging others, and to know how to participate in donor meetings with staff. Lastly, let's consider training specific to your personnel or paid staff, in addition to the basics all groups need you should train your personnel or paid staff to be an extension of your planned giving team. They need to know the basics as thoroughly as the planned giving team, they need to be comfortable having conversation with donors. One of the biggest roadblocks with staff is a fear to introduce planned giving because they don't want to be asked a question they can't answer. Like volunteers and board members, they need to know when to bring in the planned giving team. The training for staff should also focus on identifying cues and clues from donors. These cues would direct them to when the plan giving options are wanted and when they need to address the donors concerns or meet a certain objective. As you are grasping the concept of training volunteers and staff, consider your organization and how you would design a training or educational workshop. If you don't work for a chair of organization with volunteers, then consider the information you would want to know if you were a volunteer. Start with the objectives you want to accomplish like what information you want the volunteers and staff to know. The next step is to consider the roadblocks that the volunteers or staff might encounter. Then develop content to address how to remove or overcome these obstacles. This could be a series of trainings. Some organizations have an internal certificate program which has a series of workshops that educate on planned giving, after the volunteer staff complete the program, they receive a certificate. This can be very motivating to staff to have a certificate showing they have completed the planned giving certificate program. It also enhances the quality of service you provide the organization and your donors. That wraps up our brief consideration of training staff and volunteers and planned giving. After this lesson, you should now be able to: discuss technical advice needed to provide training for staff and volunteers, identify where to find the body of knowledge your staff or volunteers should know, and explain different levels of training needed for staff as compared to volunteers. In our next lesson, we will focus on providing donors clear disclosures and letters of understanding.
