Dear Fellow Practitioner,
Welcome to Asset Giving University™ (AGU) Fundamentals. AGU is a truly distinctive educational experience—one designed by practitioners, for practitioners.
Our mission is simple: to equip you with the knowledge, skills, and, most importantly, the confidence to unlock transformational asset gifts currently hidden within your giver base.
For over two decades, leaders in the National Christian Foundation (NCF) have sought to train ministry leaders like you to identify and act on tax-advantaged giving opportunities. And along the way, we recognized a deep irony: ministry leaders are often the first to encounter givers with significant assets, yet because the typical fundraising conversation focuses primarily on cash, so much opportunity is lost. The greatest wealth transfer in history is underway, and we knew we needed to find a better way to prepare you to steward it.
My pivotal moment of clarity arrived in 2019 when I attended a rigorous Wilderness First Responder 2-week training course. The teaching structure was revolutionary: roughly one-third lecture, followed immediately by two-thirds hands-on application. We learned a medical subject, and then we were thrust into a high-stakes, realistic scenario—complete with horror movie makeup and complex mock disasters—where we had to apply the knowledge immediately using the patient assessment system. We had to triage, diagnose, and act to keep people alive.
I walked out of that course with a profound and lasting sense of confidence—not just in knowing things, but in how to do things.
This, I realized, was the critical gap in training across the philanthropic space. The overwhelming majority of professional development relies on knowledge transfer. Too often we’re left without the skills to actually go and have better conversations with givers using the things we’ve learned.
Asset Giving University™ is our response to that gap.
We don’t want to just teach you the technical information about gifting real estate or appreciated securities. We want to respond to a more essential question: What are the skills you need to execute in the field?
You are about to experience a highly interactive, hands-on training that will push you beyond your current boundaries. Our earnest desire is that you walk away from AGU Fundamentals with the unshakable confidence to initiate conversations you’ve never had before.
Through those conversations, you will unlock transformative opportunities for your givers, for your ministry, and for the Kingdom.
Welcome to the field.
Bryan Feller
Founder, Asset Giving University