Blog | Featured Article

Privacy and Publicity: First Steps in Creating a Communications Strategy

July 15, 2007 | Kevin Laskowski
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 Read More
Blog | From NCFP

Summer, Sharing, and Vacations: Activities for Children

July 15, 2007 | Virginia M. Esposito
It’s summer and a young person’s fancy turns to …philanthropy? Well, perhaps more than you might think. I ran into a friend recently and she told me her college freshman daughter was off to Nicaragua. Sarah belongs to a group that organizes charitable field trips for young people – giving them the chance to help those considerably less fortunate while Read More
Blog | Case Studies

The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies

May 15, 2007 | Kevin Laskowski
Charles Bronfman returned from a trustees’ meeting of the Mount Sinai Medical Center with an idea. Bronfman, Chairman and co-founder with his late wife Andrea of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, had heard of the Medical Center’s efforts in the emerging field of personalized medicine. Dr. Jeffrey Solomon, President of the Philanthropies, recalls, “He came back to the foundation Read More
Blog | From NCFP

Motivations for Board Service: Why Many Family Members Want In and Some Don’t Want to Leave

May 15, 2007 | Virginia M. Esposito
Many of the requests for help that come to me directly or as referrals from colleagues or National Center staff are about governance. When it comes to the fundamentally important issue of effective trusteeship – and appropriate foundation governance – the range of questions is startling and no question is insignificant. How do other foundations structure their boards? Should we Read More
Knowledge Center | Article

Motivations for Board Service

May 13, 2007 | Virginia M. Esposito
Why many family members want in and some don’t want to leave Of all the governance questions I get and stories I hear, none come more frequently and with more urgency than those related to preparing the next generation of trustee leaders. Now those of you who have read these columns or heard me speak know that my concern in Read More
Blog | Featured Article

Program and General Support: Choices for Giving Families

April 15, 2007 | Kevin Laskowski
In an ongoing salvo in the decades-long debate surrounding program and general operating support, a 2007 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 Read More
Blog | Featured Article

Geographic Dispersion: Opportunities for Far-Flung Families

September 15, 2006 | Kevin Laskowski
Among all the challenges that family philanthropies of all types face, giving families increasingly find themselves struggling with geography. In 2000, the National Center for Family Philanthropy and the Foundation Center found that the grants of a vast majority of family foundations were committed to a city, state, or region; only 7.8% of family foundations were classified as national or Read More