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Delivering Family Philanthropy Services with Limited Staff and Budget

Delivering Family Philanthropy Services with Limited Staff and Budget 

10/17/17 NCFP Community Foundation Workshop 

Peer group led by Beth Briglia (Chester County CF) & Jennifer Owens (Central New York CF) 

Notes by Tony Macklin 

 

Chester County Community Foundation 

  • $47M in assets, 350 funds, fund minimum of $25k 
  • “Connecting people who care” mission 
  • Six staff + interns. The same staff (Beth) does both philanthropic services and grantmaking. Beth has the CAP® designation. 
  • Trying to accomplish 7 touches per family per year 
  • Borrowed its family philanthropy services model from Greater Atlanta CF, scaled down to smaller foundation. Offer “Standard” and “Enhanced” services menu (see Dropbox) 
  • Offer standard or enhanced regardless of size of fund, but really meant for larger funds 
  • Primarily work with private foundations from a conversion perspective, but just starting on contracted (fee-for-service) advising 
  • The CF also manages the local estate planning council and the local funder coalition 

 

Central New York Community Foundation 

  • $250M in assets – 1/2 assets are unrestricted/FOI but DAFs are $10 of $14M in total grants. Has an operating endowment to cover some costs. 
  • 20 staff (5 in development and donor services – 2 with CAP® designation) 
  • Had grown demand on transactions too fast, so wanted to attract more unrestricted/FOI. During last strategic plan, it decided to “pick a lane” for deeper services – legacy planning – the intersection of CF strength and community need – that both preserves history of the community and its wealth 
  • Developed its own “Workbook: Your Legacy Plan” 2 years ago (also a one-page flowchart) with Celebrations of Life Services (legacy facilitation company in Minneapolis). Workbook and accompanying email in the Dropbox.  
  • The workbook and related legacy planning topics are the thrust of talks at Rotary etc. rather than the “we offer all of this stuff” message; also helps CF focus its limited time. 
  • The workbook proactively sells “% to unrestricted fund” as part of bequest planning – that transmittal letter isn’t part of actual will 
  • CFs should first sell what they most want – help donors to feel that legacy planning and unrestricted gifts are “what is normal” – behavioral economics communications “people like you…” phrases 
  • Did a fund audit within past few years – gave acorn funds 3 years with a plan to fix or grant out 
  • Staff do guest articles in various publications – to help boost web presence 

 

Side conversation on marketing to private foundations 

  • General advice – you can offer unlimited generations in a DAF fund agreement to compete with private foundations and commercial DAFs, but in reality the DAF rarely lasts past 2 generations 
  • General advice – don’t just market “private foundation conversion” – also market other ways DAFs and CFs can work alongside PF to solve grantmaking and family challenges.  
  • Central New York – does an annual lunch for private foundations – brings in attorney general, lawyers to speak about trends. Has some DAFs that help PFs meet annual 5% spending rule. 
  • Indianapolis – doing one private foundation contract (fee for service), but the model isn’t one to repeat. Found you have to be careful about expectation of conversion (board, CEO, staff, donor may all have separate ideas) (PF is one of the “angel investors” donors to CL fund)  

 

Bequests – some CFs write a version of fund agreement for a bequest while others don’t 

 

Tampa Bay – 900 funds in 5 counties; tried staffing by geography but that didn’t work so now staffing by portfolios as “jacks of all trades” with some individual biases (professional advisors, agency endowments etc. 

 

Milwaukee – 600 in Legacy Society (Mary Kay’s role), one staff on agency endowments, one on supporting orgs, two on current donors 

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