Volunteering and Family Philanthropy

About this collection: This Content Collection offers tips for investing in your grantees’ capacity to engage volunteers, while also exploring the role of volunteering as part of the philanthropic education for your own family.

Curated By: Jason Born

In this unprecedented time of increasing needs and decreasing financial resources how can family funders support their closest grantees to more efficiently and effectively accomplish their critical missions? Volunteers are a vastly underutilized yet virtually unlimited resource that can expand and enhance nearly every area of an organization. However, to effectively tap volunteer resources requires creating a culture that values them and building an infrastructure to connect those who want to donate their time with high impact opportunities that empower them to make a real difference. This Content Collection offers tips for investing in your grantees’ capacity to engage volunteers, while also exploring the role of volunteering as part of the philanthropic education for your own family.

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The Power of Investing in Volunteer Engagement

Article
As funders, we pay great attention to how potential grantees steward their financial resources, but do we pay equal attention to how they lead and manage their human resources? Volunteers are a vastly underutilized, yet virtually unlimited renewable resource. The need is urgent, the timing is critical, and the support…

The Funder’s Guide to Investing in Volunteer Engagement

Report
As investors in the nonprofit sector, grant makers, businesses and government must ask the following questions: How can we better support and build capacity within the sector? How can we achieve a greater return on investment of the dollars and efforts we contribute to our grantees?

Growing to Give: Instilling Philanthropic Values in Teens and Preteens

Passages Issue Briefs
The teenage years can be the most tumultuous ones—particularly for parents! Parents may want their children to become charitable for any number of reasons: to prepare them to take formal leadership one day of the family’s foundation or other giving vehicle; to participate in philanthropy as a family activity; or…

Peer Stories, Webinars, and Other Resources

Establishing a Day of Caring to build engagement

Article
One of the hardest things for any family, but especially a family of wealth, to accomplish is engaging multiple generations in a meaningful way. I’m convinced that one of the best ways to do that is through shared Philanthropy.

Igniting the Spark: The Lawrence Welk Family Foundation

Impact Story
The Lawrence Welk Family Foundation is located in Santa Monica, California,  with family geographically dispersed around the country.  The foundation awards grants to nonprofit organizations serving children and families living in poverty in three Southern California neighborhoods. In addition, a small portion of its funding goes to nonprofits promoting youth…

Igniting the Spark: Tracy Family Foundation

Impact Story
The Tracy Family Foundation is located in Mt. Sterling, Illinois, with family geographically dispersed around the country.  The foundation’s mission is to provide resources to organizations that foster the values of Robert and Dorothy Tracy—a Catholic/Christian belief, honesty, integrity, fairness, and a strong work ethic. The foundation seeks to proactively…

Igniting the Spark: The Tarsadia Foundation

Impact Story
The Tarsadia Foundation is located in Newport Beach, California.  The foundation supports non-profit organizations with programs and projects that provide educational opportunities for the underserved, support health and well-being of the community, and assist to employ the employable through economic empowerment. This next gen case study describes their history of…
November 15, 2007

The Giving Family: Involving Children in Your Family’s Philanthropy

Susan Price, author of The Giving Family: Raising Our Children to Help Others, shares advice and strategies for involving children in both volunteering and giving. Some of the topics covered include helping children develop a personal mission statement, teaching them about making grants, and ensuring they get the most out…

Additional Tips and Tools

Summer, Sharing, and Vacations: Activities for Children

Article
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…

The Hip Family’s Guide to Happier Holidays

Tool
Though this guide has been around for a few years now, the number of requests to share it has grown each Holiday Season. In that time, your once small children and grandchildren have grown older. This expanded edition includes the same great resources for young families along with new insights…

What Are Easy Ways to Involve My Children in Giving This Year?

Article
Editor’s Note: Many families anticipating a generational board change ask the National Center for Family Philanthropy how to involve the next generation in their giving as they are getting ready to ascend to the board. Many families have begun to ask about easy ways to involve their children in philanthropy while they…