When Major Gifts and Legacy Giving
Become One Conversation
Friday, June 5, 2026
9:00 - 11:00 a.m.
You are invited to hear from Michael Geis, President and Founder, CFRE, FAHP, FCEP of The Geis Group.
Fundraisers sometimes speak as if there are two species of professionals — those who raise major gifts and those who work in planned giving. Yet when sitting across from donors, that distinction rarely exists.
The most effective fundraising cultures erase this artificial divide. Major giving speaks to what donors want to accomplish today — a building funded, a scholarship launched, lives touched now. Planned giving carries the harmony of tomorrow — endowment, legacy, and the story that continues when a donor is gone.
When these disciplines work together, opportunities emerge naturally. Many of the most meaningful gifts are not purely major or planned gifts, but blended expressions of a donor’s values and vision.
Legacy giving, however, rarely begins with technical language or formal proposals. It begins quietly — with a thoughtful question, a reflective moment in conversation, or a donor expressing hopes for what their life might mean beyond their lifetime.
This session explores how fundraisers can cultivate the awareness and instincts needed to recognize those moments. Through real-life examples, Michael Geis will illustrate how integrating major and planned giving can unlock deeper relationships, inspire lasting generosity, and help donors transform their values into enduring philanthropy.
The framework shared in this presentation is drawn from Geis’s book Further Faster: A Legacy Giving Framework for Enduring Philanthropy.
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Michael Geis has labored over 50 years in nonprofit management and capacity building. With each leadership position he assumed, he was challenged to supercharge fund development practices and results, always within ambitious time frames.
His solution was to focus on discerning which prospects revealed the greatest potential to give in the shortest amount of time. With an innate ability to detect and value characteristics that revealed a unique association with the organization, coupled with discernment of wealth potential, he built robust portfolios and coached production staff on how to convert this interest into action. Typically this involved developing individualized solicitation plans engaging natural partners that could advance the cultivation process. This effort consistently generated results that were exponentially better than previous results.
The culmination of this effort has been capsulized in Assay, which is now available for aspiring nonprofit organizations that want to catapult their fund raising achievements. Assay has the ability to synthesize your existing database, scoring characteristics and tendencies that are proven indicators of giving aptitude. Assay scores affinity or the likelihood of someone supporting your organization and through interfacing this with wealth intelligence, delivers an adjusted and more realistic assessment of your prospect’s potential.
We will be meeting at:
Lincoln Community Foundation
215 Centennial Mall South - Lincoln, NE
9:00 – 9:15: Check in and Welcome
9:15 – 9:45: Small group discussion
9:45 - 11:00: Speaker - Michael Geis
Light refreshments will be provided.
Space is limited. Registration is required by June 1, 2026.
Register Now
Meeting Locations & New Format for 2026
Monthly meetings will continue to be held at Lincoln Community Foundation and Boys Town, alternating between Lincoln and Omaha. Thanks so much to LCF and Boys Town for hosting!
We are adjusting our format to provide the opportunity for more focused networking conversation at our monthly meetings. Our Friday meetings will still be from 9:00 - 11:00 AM, with the first half hour dedicated to topic-relevant discussion.
Bookmark our new website address
Please note our website address has been update from cgne.org to cgpnebraska.org
Save these Dates
- September 4, 2026 - 9-11:00 a.m. - Thomas Kelley - Boys Town
- October 2, 2026 - 9-11:00 a.m. - Jason Kennedy - Lincoln Community Foundation
- November 6, 2026 - 9:00-11:00 a.m. - Boys Town
- December 4, 2026 - 11:30 - 1:30 p.m. - Location TBA - CGPN Annual Meeting and Celebration
See the entire 2027 program calendar
Join CGPN Today
The mission of the Charitable Gift Planners of Nebraska is to provide the education, inspiration, and connections to build confidence, competence, and credibility in facilitating philanthropic gifts by:
- enhancing professional skills through knowledge and education,
- building relationships with other partners in the charitable gift planning process,
- and serving as the network and professional resource for charitable gift and estate planners.
New! You can now register for your Local CGPN membership right on our website!
