The Joyful Gift Planning Guy.
Richard Letocha spent 15 years doing one of the most technical jobs in nonprofit fundraising. He is not what you'd expect.
How Richard got here
Richard spent 15 years as a gift planning advisor at Johns Hopkins University. He made over 350 donor visits across 20 states, helped secure more than $10 million in legacy gifts, and played a central role in launching the Hopkins Legacy Society. In 2024, his colleagues gave him the Rebecca Lowry Award, which they called the good guy award. It goes to the person everyone actually wants to work with. His peers nominated him, which is the part he's most proud of.
In April 2026, he resigned from Hopkins and started RJL Consulting. His wife Phoebe, an archivist at Hopkins who is currently digitizing a collection of early 20th-century sheet music and making it accessible to music historians everywhere, keeps her job there. His two daughters just graduated from college and graduate school in the same month. He's an empty nester now. His words when someone asked why he finally made the leap: if not now, when?
He drives a bright yellow2019 Chevy Bolt EV because he loves it. He is, by his own description, a ridiculous guy.
Good philanthropy is simple philanthropy.
Richard believes the gift planning field has a complicated relationship with complexity. Some consultants love it. They show up with frameworks, technical structures, and reports that take two hours to read. The complexity becomes the product.
Richard fights that tooth and nail. Most of the time, the simplest path to a legacy gift is also the best one. Donors don't need to be impressed by the gift structure. They need to feel heard, understood, and comfortable enough to act on what they already want to do.
That's what Richard does. He brings joy to a field that doesn't always feel joyful. He makes donors comfortable with conversations that usually feel intimidating. He makes organizations comfortable with a process that usually feels overwhelming. And then he does the actual work alongside them, from the first donor visit to the closed gift to the systems that outlast the engagement.
What makes Richard different
He listens. He has no preset agenda. He's as focused on the donor's well-being as he is on the organization's goals. He doesn't believe in making things complicated for the sake of appearing sophisticated. And he actually enjoys the conversations that most gift planning consultants find technically burdensome.
In a field that can feel stodgy, formal, and a little intimidating, Richard shows up as a person. A credentialed, deeply experienced, extremely capable person who also happens to drive a yellow car and call himself a ridiculous guy.
The letters after the name
Richard holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor's degree in history from Duke University. He has been a Certified Financial Planner for 19 years and holds the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy credential. He is a past president of the Chesapeake Planned Giving Council and currently serves on the boards of the Student Support Network and the Foundation for Baltimore County Public Library. Before Johns Hopkins, he was a Vice President and Trust Relationship Manager at M&T Bank, where he oversaw trust relationships valued at more than $200 million.
He leads with warmth. The credentials are just context.
