History

A steering committee was formed in January, 2004 at the request of the LEAVE A LEGACY-Thomas Jefferson Area Steering Committee to consider the steps necessary to form a local planned giving council affiliated with the National Committee on Planned Giving (NCPG).

LEAVE A LEGACY^® is a public relations campaign of NCPG designed to promote planned giving, especially bequests. A grassroots chapter was formed and began a publicity campaign in the Thomas Jefferson Area in 2000, chaired by Tom Kennedy and steering committee members Sharon Saari, Jeff Sobel, John Redick, Richard Howard-Smith, Kimberlee Barrett-Johnson, Kathy Train, and Jim Fernald. In order to better monitor the use of the brand and to make sure that LEAVE A LEGACY campaigns had solid support and effective accountability to the parent organization, NCPG began requiring that all LEAVE A LEGACY programs be associated with, supported by, and accountable to a NCPG-affiliated planned giving council.

Thus Tom Kennedy called on a group of community leaders with demonstrated interest and expertise in planned giving to form a steering committee to establish a planned giving council: Kimberlee Barrett-Johnson, CFP; Sheryl Hayes, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities; Richard Howard-Smith, estate planning attorney; Ray Mishler, MJH Foundation; Kevin O'Halloran, Charlottesville Albemarle Community Foundation; Mark Smith, UVA Development; and Paula Newcomb, Monticello Foundation. This steering committee completed the process necessary to form a NCPG-affiliated council and the newly-formed Charlottesville Area Planned Giving Council held its first luncheon meeting and educational event in May, 2004.

Since that time, the Council has held three other lunch meetings, grown in membership to approximately 42 members, adopted by-laws, developed infrastructure by doubling its board effective July 1, 2005 and creating committees for board development, programming and LEAVE A LEGACY.

Relationship to NCPG and NCPG History
The National Committee on Planned Giving^® is the professional association for people whose work includes developing, marketing, and administering charitable planned gifts. Those people include fund raisers for nonprofit institutions and consultants and donor advisors working in a variety of for-profit settings.

In 1969, Congress passed the Tax Reform Act changing the way Americans could make charitable contributions. This was the major impetus for the creation of the field of planned giving.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, groups of professionals involved in gift planning began to have "think tank" meetings to discuss the feasibility of a national organization to act as a coordinator and facilitator for networking the various professionals and organizations involved in planned giving.

A meeting to study the needs and possibilities of a national organization for planned giving was held on October 29-30, 1985, in Chicago. Those in attendance agreed that there was a need for a significant number of services for planned giving officers that might be provided by some type of national organization. Its mission would be twofold: to provide quality educational opportunities for gift planning professionals and to unite the growing number of local planned giving groups already forming in larger metropolitan areas.

In late January of 1988, NCPG opened its office in Indianapolis, Indiana. The National Committee on Planned Giving was formed as a federation of planned giving councils to facilitate, coordinate, and encourage the education and training of the planned giving community, and to facilitate effective communication among the many different professionals in this community. Individual professionals join their local council. The local council joins NCPG. Together, the individual, the council, and the national organization work to improve the quality and quantity of planned gifts and to ensure a continued favorable climate for charitable activity of all kinds.