Choosing and Preparing Your Grantmaking Successors

Family foundation donors and first generation boards should begin the continuity and succession discussion early in the foundation’s lifetime if perpetuity is the objective. In a succession plan, one trustee usually succeeds another. However, before succession can take place there should be continuity of governance where members of more than one generation are working together as peers. This Passages profiles the succession planning experience of the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation and the challenges faced when the foundation sought to add third generation family members to its Board of Directors.