Giving families walk a fine line balancing social impact and family unity. With scarce resources and great needs, many families want every grant to have the most impact possible. At the same time, they are collectively engaged in a family enterprise whose members often have diverse interests, live in different places, and have very different preferences for what to fund.

Striking this difficult balance is the subject of the forthcoming National Center issue paper Strategic Philanthropy: Maximizing Family Engagement and Social Impact by Ashley Snowdon Blanchard, President of the Hill-Snowdon Foundation and a consultant with TCC Group. The subject was a hot topic in the National Center’s teleconference series. Our February teleconference featuring Blanchard drew record participation. On that call, she stressed that strategic focus can not only increase a family’s social impact but bring a family together.

This issue of Family Giving News offers a preview of our upcoming Passages issue paper Strategic Philanthropy, in which Blanchard shares the stories of families that found both unity and impact through strategic grantmaking.

At a time of great media and regulatory scrutiny of the philanthropic sector, 300 foundation representatives from 35 states and the District of Columbia took the time to gather in Washington, DC earlier this month for the 14th annual Foundations on the Hill (FOTH). Organized by the Council on Foundations and the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, the event brings foundation trustees and staff to Capitol Hill to discuss pending and future legislation and tell the story of philanthropy.

Family Giving News was there, accompanying the Michigan delegation, as giving families did just that. This month’s issue chronicles the issues, the meetings, and the lessons learned at this year’s Foundations on the Hill.

The 20 Habits of Highly Effective Philanthropists

“Foundations do not need a lot of money to be effective,” declared philanthropy icon Paul Ylvisaker in his 1989 essay Small Can Be Effective. “If, indeed, they were to exploit only a fraction of the strategies available to them, their individual and collective impact on American life would be vastly and beneficially expanded.”

Ylvisaker’s essay listed 20 functions of philanthropic foundations and funds. Only a few of these necessarily involved money changing hands. The remainder represented a call for foundations to initiate, invent, advocate, and, ultimately, to lead.

It’s a valuable message for philanthropies of all sizes, notes Virginia Esposito, President of the National Center for Family Philanthropy and Ylvisaker’s student and biographer.

“Giving families are perhaps overly modest,” she says. “Too many of us think, ‘Oh, I couldn’t talk to my senator.’ ‘We couldn’t convene a meeting.’ We underestimate ourselves too often. There are so many things we can do for the causes we care about. Grantmaking is only one of them.”

This month’s Family Giving News offers an overview of Ylvisaker’s 20 functions of philanthropy. Part of a new series of articles celebrating “The Voices of Family Philanthropy,” this month’s issue highlights, in Ylvisaker’s words, “the range and variety of the devices by which foundations, whatever their size, can exercise and maximize their effectiveness.”

Encouraging Young Philanthropists, Part II

Last month’s Family Giving News tackled the question of how today’s giving families encourage children to be generous. This month’s issue asks: how can charitable children become effective family philanthropists? How does a family prepare the next generation for possible roles as board members, fund advisors, or philanthropic donors in their own right?

Many family philanthropists feel that charity is something to be expected of the younger generation. But it’s possible to raise an incredibly charitable young adult who doesn’t seem interested in the grantmaking, management, governance, and family dynamics that characterize modern family philanthropy. Additionally, the demands of school, college, career, or raising a family may leave little time for philanthropic activities. Families face the dual challenge of engaging young people on their own terms and at their own pace.

That’s why it’s important for families to remain flexible about when and how young people participate in family philanthropy—giving them time to find their own passions, articulate their own values, and act on them in their own ways while giving them opportunities to learn by doing.

Encouraging Young Philanthropists

The holidays are a time of celebration, sharing, and enjoying the company of family and friends. They’re also a time of advertising, doorbuster sales, and conspicuous consumption. For families concerned about raising charitable children, the holidays can represent a challenge as well as a great opportunity.

"Children are barraged by media messages about how buying things will make them happy," Susan Price, Vice President of the National Center and author of The Giving Family: Raising Our Children to Help Others (Council on Foundations, 2005), recently told the Baltimore Sun. "We need to counter those messages about the value of giving back to others."

In honor of the holiday season, this month’s Family Giving News asks: how can families instill the value of giving? Specifically, how can they encourage their children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews to give their time, talent and treasure, not just this month, but all year round?

Creating an Effective Grant Agreement

For most of its fifty-year history, the Dyson Foundation didn’t use grant agreements. The Millbrook, New York-based family foundation was concerned the contract-like letters of agreement between grantmaker and grantee would make the foundation too formal and bureaucratic.

“We started using them some years go, though, with larger grants,” notes the foundation’s Executive Vice President Diana Gurieva. “It really helped clarify the relationship.”

“We now use grant agreements with all our grantees,” she says. "We had grantees wondering why we had not used them before.”

This month’s Family Giving News takes a look at creating an effective grant agreement: what should—and perhaps shouldn’t—be in them and what your options are when things don’t go as planned.

Donor-Advised Funds:  Tools for Giving Families

Wanted: Tax-Advantageous, Convenient, Flexible Way to Give Back. Giving Family Seeks Way to Make Difference Privately. Must Love Children.

Families looking for less time-consuming but still informed and effective ways to give back are increasingly turning to donor-advised funds, either exclusively or in tandem with other giving vehicles, such as private foundations.

This month’s Family Giving News looks at how donors are employing these vehicles in pursuit of their charitable goals.

Telling Your Family's Story

Family philanthropies are intimately connected with the past that shapes them. As stewards of both a public trust and a family legacy, philanthropic families are constantly drawing on their history for wisdom, energy, and focus. That’s why growing numbers of families are recording their stories to share with future generations.

The sharing can be as simple as storytelling at a family reunion or as elaborate as a commissioned book or video.  It doesn’t matter so much how you do it, just that it be done.

“I believe family histories have enormous power,” says Ginny Esposito, President of the National Center for Family Philanthropy.  “By chronicling philanthropic history, you lay the groundwork for those who will be the future stewards of your legacy – including generations of your own family – in short, so the future may learn from the past.”

Beyond Grantmaking

In a 1989 monograph Small Can Be Effective, the late family foundation trustee Paul Ylvisaker outlined 20 functions of philanthropic foundations and funds. Surprisingly, only a few of these functions necessarily involved money changing hands.

“Foundations do not need a lot of money to be effective,” Ylvisaker declared. “If, indeed, they were to exploit only a fraction of the strategies available to them, their individual and collective impact on American life would be vastly and beneficially expanded.”

Charles W. Collier, senior philanthropic adviser at Harvard University, agrees.  “There is more to family wealth than the financial dimension,” Collier contends in his book Wealth in Families, pointing to the tremendous human, intellectual, and social capital that most families overlook when contemplating the real wealth they have to give.

While grantmaking is an indispensable and significant part of philanthropy, many foundations combine all their assets to increase their giving potential. This month’s Family Giving News reviews the myriad ways family funds are supplementing their grantmaking with creative investments of their own time, talent, resources and expertise.

Privacy and Publicity:  First Steps in Creating a Communications Strategy

Family philanthropy is at once an intensely private and a very public enterprise where personal principles meet public obligations. It is often difficult to find a compromise between these competing values. Many giving families opt to keep a low public profile, preferring to remain largely out of the public eye. Others see value in stepping into the spotlight, and many are taking advantage of new technology to improve transparency amid increased media and regulatory scrutiny and an ever more sophisticated fundraising community.

Philanthropy will always be a balance of both private and public—private enough to truly express your family’s values and yet public enough to make a real difference in the lives of others. This month’s Family Giving News offers suggestions for creating a communications strategy that strikes the appropriate balance.

Passed in August 2006, the Pension Protection Act introduced a number of charitable reforms, including new charitable incentives, increases in penalties, and changes to donor-advised funds and supporting organizations. A new year, a new Congress, and an income tax return later, Family Giving News revisits the issue to find out how its provisions are affecting giving families and what new changes may be ahead.

In the latest salvo in the decades-long debate surrounding program and general operating support, a new report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy charges:

The grantmaking practices of a significant part of the foundation sector may be crippling small community-based and other nonprofit organizations because of one significant factor—the unwillingness of most foundations to provide general operating support to most nonprofit grant applicants.

Philanthropic families, whether they favor program support or general purpose grants, routinely travel in the inspirational, if sometimes murky, space between private values and public virtues. Giving families are thus uniquely positioned to provide example and leadership in this eternal debate, which centers on whether and how nonprofit need and philanthropic favor can be effectively and accountably reconciled. The month's Family Giving News offers a review of the program vs. general support controversy as well as suggestions for navigating these often contentious waters.

Effective and meaningful family philanthropy channels a family's passions, interests, beliefs, values, and resources for a social good.  Maintaining this delicate balance between private values and public virtue can position giving families for their most inspiring and innovative grants, but it also places them at the sometimes confusing intersection of a number of public and private initiatives.  Whether your giving supports geographic communities, specific issues, or both, the questions are the same:  Which nonprofits are doing great work?  What are other funders contributing?  What is the role of government?  What is ultimately the right role for my family?  How do I find out?  And between increased media and regulatory scrutiny and a giving family's desire to make a substantive, positive difference in the lives of others, the answers become all the more important.

It might be helpful to pause and consider how change is happening in your own backyard--what are the needs?  What kind of work is taking place?  Who's doing it?  Where and how can my family be involved?  This month's Family Giving News presents an exercise in mapping your philanthropic field of endeavor, helping you to understand what's going on in the communities in which you give and to pinpoint opportunities for impact.

Unlike the intrepid Alice in Wonderland, today’s giving families care very much about where their philanthropic adventures take them and their communities. This is where mission statements, short descriptions of why an organization exists and what causes it will support, can prove eminently useful. Whether it’s a crisp declaration of a family’s shared values or a succinct manifesto for social change, a well written mission statement goes a long way to providing the kind of clarity of vision your giving family needs to be effective—regardless of the chosen philanthropic vehicle. This month’s Family Giving News explores mission statements—why families have them, how to create them, and how families re-examine them to focus, fortify and fulfill their philanthropic promise.

This year, the National Center for Family Philanthropy celebrates ten years of inspiring family giving.  To mark the occasion, Family Giving News invites you to spend “A Year with the Giving Family.”  What follows is a calendar of activities designed to engage you and your family in a new philanthropic endeavor or to reinvigorate an existing family giving program.

Accountability can be a challenging and complex  issue for giving families, defined as they are by a deeply held private commitment to a public good.  Balancing a family’s need for privacy with the transparency required of nonprofit organizations can be tricky, but, in times of close media and regulatory scrutiny, it is a balancing act today’s giving families find themselves performing more often. 

Accountability has always been a concern for the philanthropic sector.  Charitable assets are held in public trust, and there is considerable federal, state, and local oversight of charitable dollars.  Media and regulatory scrutiny comes with the territory, but that territory is changing fast.  Philanthropic families are in control of larger amounts of charitable funds than ever before and, thus, the stakes have never been higher. Additionally, there is more information publicly and easily available about one’s charitable choices than ever before.  Giving families are expected to do great things with great wealth, and an informed public can now question whether or not family philanthropy is living up to its promise.

The end of the year brings with it opportunities for celebration, reflection, and resolution.  This month’s Family Giving News closes out another year with suggestions for taking advantage of these opportunities to demonstrate your philanthropy’s commitment to accountable family philanthropy.

This month's Family Giving News offers tips on how to negotiate these charitable exits--how your family fund might make successful, sure-footed exits in the course of your philanthropy.

In this Family Giving News, we’ll look at ways families can meet the challenges of geographic dispersal. While the tensions distance creates can be great, flexible and creative philanthropic families have long found ways to turns these tensions into opportunities.

For many families the act of giving remains an intensely personal one and discussions regarding their philanthropy are more likely to take place across a kitchen table than a boardroom table. For this reason the idea of inviting non-family perspectives into their philanthropy may seem more like a complicating factor than a boon. Even families whose relationships are relatively trouble-free may have difficulty managing the personalities and reaching consensus within the family, let alone trying to involve new people and points of view. Including diversity in your philanthropy, however, doesn't have to mean more complications, chaos, or cacophony. Instead including non-family perspectives can increase your family's satisfaction with the philanthropic experience by:1.) making your giving more responsive to community needs; 2.) bringing in fresh ideas and energy; 3.) bringing new skills and experiences to your giving; and 4.) providing new insight into the personal mechanics that govern and influence your giving. In this month's issue Family Giving News will explore the means and benefits of including non-family participants in your philanthropy.

A recent Council on Foundations' survey—from the twelfth edition of Foundation Governing Boards and Administrative Expenses in Private Foundations—found that of the 144 family foundation trustees polled about activities related to their board service, only 21—14.6%—reported participating in board self-assessments in 2004. By comparison, 74.6% of those surveyed reported attending conferences or seminars to increase their capacity as board members, and 75% made program-related site visits as part of their board duties. Certainly, the effectiveness of a family foundation's board is inextricably linked to the success of the philanthropy as a whole. Why, then, do so few families undertake self-assessments?

Like so many other things preparation for a family meeting is vital to its success. With a little planning you can orchestrate and carry off a family meeting that accomplishes your philanthropic goals, strengthens your family's commitment to effective governance of your giving vehicle, and is more enjoyable than you thought possible. By taking time to think through why, when, where, and how your family will conduct its discussions and decisions about your giving, you can identify and address potential areas of discord and conflict, and feel confident in your ability to address them. In this issue of Family Giving News, we'll look at the six things you can do to make sure your next family meeting is a success:

• establish a purpose
• get everyone's buy-in
• think about logistics
• set ground rules and expectations
• consider the role of non-family board members
• spend time not discussing business

As nice as it would be to believe that a family's unique dynamic— composed of individual and collective histories, experiences, memories, and modes of communication—remains firmly outside the discussions in which philanthropic decisions are made, the truth is that these factors can influence a family's giving. Because a family philanthropy is built on a family's values, identity, passion, and energy, the effect a family's dynamic has on its ability to accomplish its philanthropic goals is hardly surprising. In this issue of Family Giving News we'll look briefly at a few of the situations in which family dynamics can come to bear on your philanthropy and offer some tips on techniques you can use to lessen the effects of current conflicts or decrease the likelihood of future ones.

In last month's issue we explored several ways to expand your philanthropic agenda to include new giving vehicles and new ways of thinking about effective giving. Among the giving options we explored was the idea of program-related investing, wherein philanthropies use their financial resources to support ventures or projects whose mission complements their own. This month we'll look more closely at program or mission-related investing and examine how breaking down the barriers between your philanthropy's financial processes and charitable goals can help your family get the greatest bang for your buck. We'll also look at the ways in which some family philanthropies, including the F.B. Heron Foundation and the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, are already using these techniques to maximize charitable returns and reconcile fiscal policies with foundation philosophy.

One of the greatest strengths of philanthropy, and family philanthropy in particular, is its malleability in the face of constantly shifting societal needs. In fact, philanthropy exists to fund the ideas and projects that the government and private industry cannot or will not, due to bureaucratic red tape or the impractical financial risk that they pose. Because family philanthropies run as much—if not more—on heart and idealism as they do on practicality and finance, they are liberated to be creative in the projects they fund and the ways in which they fund them.

In this issue of Family Giving News we’ll examine some of the creative giving options open to families today which can help your family to maximize the impact of their grants dollars and explore the boundaries of what is possible through your giving.

Whether your family is just getting its feet wet, philanthropically speaking, or has long been a fixture of the philanthropic landscape in your community, collaborating with other donors and nonprofits can be a great way to expand the boundaries of your giving. For new donors and their families collaboration can provide a forum in which they can: network with grantmakers already established in their chosen area of giving; learn about existing nonprofits in their geographic area or areas of topical interest; and become acclimated to the philanthropic climate in which they will operate. Experienced giving families can also benefit from collaboration, particularly those delving into new funding arenas, interested in connecting with new grantees, or looking for insight into the most-pressing needs of their communities.

this month's Family Giving News focuses on how philanthropic families respond to tragedies. Although many families establish their philanthropies with a specific mission in mind which governs their grantmaking focus and decisions, many can't help but feel a strong desire to contribute when natural disasters and other tragedies hit both close to home and across the globe. Recent natural disasters—Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma along America's Gulf Coast, and in other parts of Florida; the colossal tsunami in South Asia last December; and Pakistan's devastating earthquake just last month—have not only rallied the support of America's giving families, but have also focused their attention on how to help victims and their communities in the long term.

Luckily there are lots of experts out there ready to help us get our financial and legal affairs in order: lawyers and wealth advisors who can apprise us of our options and ensure that our tangible assets are distributed in a way that gives us peace of mind. But what about all of the intangible characteristics, experiences, and beliefs that constitute a large part of our lives? How can we ensure that the qualitative portion of our lives is not lost to our loved ones and descendants?

Even for families with a long history of charitable giving to church groups, civic organizations, educational institutions, and other non-profit organizations, deciding to embark on a formalized philanthropic agenda may seem like a formidable task. The myriad of choices available to families in both giving vehicles and giving strategies is enough to make the savviest entrepreneur or academic's head spin. So where does a family begin? What questions should they consider when choosing a mission, a giving vehicle, or grantmaking process? How do they choose the options that best fit their family, their goals and their communities' needs?

Family Giving News explores how your family can use site visits to: improve your grantmaking and accomplish your mission; establish collaborative relationships with the nonprofits you fund; and remain engaged with the organizations that help your family to affect change in your community.

Providing for children not only involves ensuring that they have clothes on their backs, roofs over their heads, and food in their stomachs, it also requires that families supply a sense of appreciation for their gifts, monetary and otherwise, and the desire to share those gifts with others.

This month we'll take a look back at some of the topics Family Giving News has covered over the past year, which we hope donors, their families, and advisors will continue to find useful as they carry out their giving agendas. In our quest to continue to be responsive to reader interests and concerns, we also ask that you take just a few moments to complete our annual Family Giving News Readers' Survey.

In preparation for the release of our latest issue of Passages, Estate Planning as a Family: A Collaborative Approach, this month's Family Giving News explores how new estate planning techniques can help families turn a difficult and often dreaded conversation into a constructive and even comforting one.

What it means to be effective varies widely from family to family, based on your goals and aspirations, histories, and expectations. The question of effectiveness is so multi-faceted and subtly nuanced that giving even an adequate account of the issue can be very difficult. This issue of Family Giving News offers context for your family as you consider the impact and effectiveness of your philanthropy.

This month's issue explores the fundamental decision that all family philanthropists face regarding what life cycle best fits their philanthropy's mission and their family's circumstances. Should families establish perpetual foundations or should they create foundations, donor- advised funds, and other giving vehicles designed to "sunset" or spend out their endowments at a certain point in their life cycle? Or might both options be appropriate?

In honor of Black History month, this month's issue celebrates the philanthropic tradition and contributions of African-American family philanthropists. We'll look at the venerable and thriving African-American philanthropic community, and profile donors whose generosity and generosity of spirit have a great impact on our world.

In this month's issue we'll look at the role of values and ethics in family philanthropy: How does a family determine the values that will guide their philanthropy? How do they define and transmit those values? And finally how do families put them to use in service of their philanthropic agenda?

The holidays can be an opportune time for families to reflect on their current philanthropic mission and to set goals for the approaching new year and years to come. Here are some ways to simplify your holiday, maximize your time, and reflect upon your family's philanthropy—although some of them might seem elementary, it helps to bear in mind that the simplest traditions make for the most rewarding holidays.

Community involvement and support for local institutions have always been at the heart of family philanthropy. In this month's issue of Family Giving News we feature the stories of two philanthropic families who have used the services and expertise provided by community foundations to advance their giving and family philanthropic agendas. Also in this month's issue, we launch a new regular feature of Family Giving News, " Profiles in Family Philanthropy," in which we celebrate the legacies and philanthropic contributions of family philanthropists all over the world.

This issue of Family Giving News is devoted to looking at how faith, in both the specific and general senses, can inform and transform conversations about participation and accountability in philanthropy. It features two contributing authors who explore the role that faith can play in guiding families through an increasingly turbulent nonprofit sector.
 

This month's Family Giving News explores some of the many options available for families seeking to integrate international grantmaking into their charitable missions. We describe the US Patriot Act: what it means, what it requires of donors, nonprofits, and grantees, and how it is affecting the philanthropic community. We'll also show you how intermediary organizations from around the world and in your own backyard can help you comply with the new regulations and accomplish your charitable goals abroad.
 

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