Pioneering legal professionals such as Philip R. Converse, David Donaldson, Norman S. Fink, John Holt Myers, and Jon L. Schumacher launched their careers in charitable gift planning in the 1960s.
Many of today’s national planned gift marketing and consulting firms began in the 1960s. Robert F. Sharpe, Sr. founded his firm in 1963. Richard W. Coughlin hired Andre Donikian to begin R&R Newkirk’s planned giving services in 1967. Donikian founded Pentera in 1975. Marc Carmichael succeeded him at Newkirk.
There was a ready audience for Prerau and Teitell’s Taxwise Giving (first published in 1963), Arthur Andersen’s Tax Economics of Charitable Giving (1964), and The Case for Deferred Giving (Council for Advancement and Support of Education, 1966). James K. Sinclaire, Jr. began Kennedy-Sinclaire’s planned gift publications in the 1960s.
By 1968, a full toolbox was available for gift planners: bequests, life income trusts, pooled income funds, lead trusts, gift annuities, gifts of complex assets, private and public community foundations, donor-advised funds, and supporting organizations. Gift planning was encouraged by the National Council of Churches, the Association of American Colleges, the Committee on Gift Annuities (ACGA), tax attorneys and consultants specializing in gift planning, banks, life insurance and trust companies, alumni associated with many college bequest and trust programs, and a growing number of reference publications.
Gift Planning History 