By Todd Cohen  Reprinted with the permission of the Philanthropy Journal at www.philanthropyjournal.org

MATTHEWS, N.C. -- The Planned Giving Design Center in Matthews, N.C., has acquired Boston-based AssetStream, an online service donors used to make gifts of securities over the internet, and has expanded it to help charities market and process all gifts of securities, including those made online.

The center, at pgdc.com, provides news and information about planned giving through the websites of more than 120 nonprofit clients, mainly community foundations but also hospitals and universities.

Those clients, which have purchased exclusive licenses to serve geographic regions that now cover 60 percent to 70 percent of the U.S. population, now can also offer AssetStream on their customized pgdc.com websites, said Lee Hoffman, the center’s CEO and a co-owner of PhilanthroTec, a Matthews firm that makes planned-giving software for professional advisers and planned-giving officers.

The center also has redesigned its website, which Hoffman said reaches 20,000 professional advisers, 40 percent of them working for nonprofits, the remainder for financial services companies or law or accounting firms

The new open-source website now offers expanded browse and search functions for visitors, who can register for free through the website of their local Planned Giving Design Center host.

And registered members, who receive a free email newsletter containing national news and local news from their local host, now can also subscribe to any other Planned Giving Design Center site to receive its local news as well.