NCFP Board Member Ashley Blanchard

Ashley Blanchard

NCFP Chair | Head of Philanthropy, Lansberg Gersick Advisors | Trustee, Hill-Snowdon Foundation

Ashley is the Head of Philanthropy at Lansberg Gersick Advisors (LGA), where she helps families define their collective vision for their philanthropy, and then build the governance, operations, and programs to support that vision. Ashley has particular expertise working with family foundations undergoing generational transitions, when matters of purpose, values, and strategy come to the fore. Beyond traditional philanthropy, she works with families to consider the ways that they utilize wealth to achieve their social impact goals, integrating these activities into their broader enterprise continuity plans.

Prior to her work at LGA, Ashley founded Blanchard Consulting, and before that headed the philanthropy team at TCC Group, a nonprofit strategy and management consulting firm. She writes and presents frequently on matters related to family philanthropy succession and continuity, was the founding co-chair of the Council on Foundation’s Next Generation Task Force, and is a trainer in the 21/64 Network (inaugural class).

Ashley is Vice Chair of the Hill-Snowdon Foundation, a Washington-DC based family foundation which strives to create a more fair and just society.  She is the former Chair and a fourth-generation family member.

She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where she completed her master’s degree in Public Policy.  She lives in New York City with her husband and children.

Contributions

Strategic Focus for Family Foundations

Posted on February 14, 2008 by Valerie Jacobs Hapke, Ashley Blanchard

Ashley Blanchard presents how family foundations can transition from a giving approach based on trustees' disparate interests, to a more focused and strategic approach based on common values and interests. Focusing on her own experience as a family foundation trustee, as well as the experience of other giving families that have made a transition to more strategic grantmaking… Read More

Strategic Philanthropy: Maximizing Family Engagement and Social Impact

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Ashley Blanchard

For the sake of family cohesion and engagement, many family foundations base their grantmaking on the varied personal interests of their trustees. The unfortunate result is a scattershot grantmaking portfolio, with limited social impact. Conversely, a family foundation risks excluding family members if they are not interested in a shared programmatic agenda, minimizing the unifying potential of the foundation. The… Read More