Whether your family chooses to experience philanthropy through a foundation, fund, or some other giving vehicle—it instantly becomes a “double-bottom line” institution. In other words, giving vehicles serve social purposes while they also engage, nurture—and yes—challenge philanthropic families. The tension between service to a community and commitment to family, between public purpose and private initiative, energizes and tests the best family philanthropies as they strive to create a legacy, make grants that make a difference, and transfer leadership to a new generation.
The key to navigating some of family philanthropy's significant challenges is setting policy that anticipates conflict and change—making the tensions of family philanthropy work for you before they work against you.
Choosing a mission
It can be tough to engage a large, diverse family around a single charitable mission. Some families are unified around a set of philanthropic concerns. Others are all over the charitable map. Some family members might agree on means but not on ends. Others might agree on a program area but disagree on methods.
Families often counter these potential tensions by adopting a flexible mission at the outset, letting each generation decide for itself what its goals will be, or agreeing to revisit the mission after a period of years. Others are more interested in instilling a common strategic focus. Family leaders who have this interest might include family members in a broad discussion of values and interests before deciding upon a shared vision for the philanthropy. Still others offer to support individual philanthropic endeavors through discretionary grants or matching grant programs so as to support family diversity without overwhelming a common project. All of these strategies are adopted with the understanding that community needs and family interests will change over time. The family’s philanthropy will necessarily have to be responsive to that.
Making decisions
Some families find that the roles they played at home for years are inescapable. A loving father who made all the important decisions for an equally loving household might have been a dynamic that worked at home but not in the family fund. A daughter whom no one seemed to take seriously might struggle to find footing among her still-dismissive sibling trustees. When families gather together, no matter how much the young may have grown, no matter how independently successful they might have become, no matter how much they all may have changed, family members tend to slip ever-so-easily into their old roles. In this, old conflicts are born anew.
Thankfully, philanthropy grants family members the opportunity to adopt new roles—trustee, director, officer, staff member, committee member, or just philanthropist-at-large—and—with these roles should come new ways of relating to one another.
Amid these new relationships, family members can develop the repertoire of decision-making methods that suit their situation and make more objective choices about when and how to use these methods. Rather than relying on how they’ve always made decisions, successful giving families take the opportunity to discover new ways of working together.
Growing up and growing apart
A significant difficulty in family philanthropy is geographic dispersion. Family philanthropies created after World War II are now looking to their third- and fourth-generations to take on leadership roles, only to be reminded that they no longer live down the street. As young family members grow up, go off to college, find spouses, have children, or simply pursue their dreams elsewhere, a family once concentrated in and committed to a given community, state, or region may find itself with new communities, new commitments, and wide-ranging interests. Families that have always met in their beloved hometown may now find it difficult to gather for quarterly meetings. While all family members may agree on “giving back to the community,” they may now have different communities in mind.
The successful giving family anticipates the family’s mobility and adopts practices that fit a far-flung family. A family foundation might reimburse travel expenses for trustees. Family members might meet via teleconference and post video of site visits online. Family members might use matching grants, discretionary gifts, donor-advised funds, and mission-related investments to support causes and institutions outside a giving vehicle’s geographic focus. Creative families learn to stretch their philanthropy to embrace new communities and causes along with new family members without abandoning their original community or their commitment to the family legacy. Some have even embraced the distance as a way of promoting cross-fertilization of ideas and practices in different geographic areas.
Transferring leadership
Perhaps the toughest challenge that giving families face is succession. Where do we go from here? Who will take on leadership roles? When? How do we prepare them for those roles? These questions consistently rank among the highest concerns of family philanthropists.
Families know that their leaders will one day leave the family foundation or fund. Successful giving families plan for their departure to ensure not only the continuity of the foundation or fund but also the larger legacy of which each family member will forever be a part.
It's a good practice to start early, encouraging charity and individual accomplishment while cultivating a sense of family history. Develop criteria for participation in the family’s philanthropy with a set of clear expectations and responsibilities. Be flexible and keep the invitation open.
Remembering family
While you can create avenues for resolving conflicts creatively and effectively, you can’t anticipate them all. When that happens, the National Center is here to help with advice, resources, and referrals.
Through every challenge, remember the asset you possess that independent philanthropies do not: the family. The presence of family in family foundations and funds is too often spoken of as a liability, as something that complicates the grantmaking process more than it helps. “Family issues” might be the problem today, but, when creating policy, don’t wish away the very things that brought you together yesterday and might keep you together tomorrow.