Giving Together: A Workbook for Family Philanthropy

Posted on September 24, 2016 by The Philanthropic Initiative

The exercises in this workbook are based on The Philanthropic Initiative’s experience working with hundreds of family philanthropies over TPI’s 20 years of philanthropic consulting. Every family brings its own unique culture, goals, and strengths to the journey of creating a family philanthropic enterprise. The resulting governance structures, funding approaches, and operating models are nearly as varied as the families… Read More

Core Components of Foundations that Learn

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Harold Richman, Josh Weber, Leila Fiester, Prue Brown, Ralph Hamilton, Robert Chaskin

There is a growing sense in the philanthropic field that knowledge, strategically applied, is as important to community-change efforts as money. If this is true, then foundation leaders must re-imagine and reconstruct the role of learning and give it a central place in their organizations’ missions, goals, strategies, internal structures, and external partnerships. In short, foundations must become learning institutions… Read More

Creating Choices Before Making Choices: One Family Foundation’s Journey to Finding a Strategic Focus

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Kelly Medinger

Rooted in business principles, philanthropic study, and reflective practice, this article examines the first step of building a grantmaking strategy – finding an issue or problem to address – and presents a three-part model for creating choices that reflect a foundation’s donor intent, organizational talents and resources, and broader community needs. Ultimately, this process illustrates how a family foundation can find a strategic focus, either for all or simply… Read More

The Story of How the Civil Marriage Collaborative Helped America Embrace Marriage Equality

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Proteus Fund

There were many forces at work in this historic change: tenacious leaders and litigators, coalitions of diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations, straight individual and organizational allies, elected officials, celebrities, and most important, hundreds of thousands of individuals, couples and families at the grassroots level… Read More

Impact Investing: Frameworks for Families

Posted on January 24, 2016 by The ImPact

This primer provides family enterprises with clear explanations of the “why,” “how,” and “what” of impact investing, while illuminating the diversity of the impact investing marketplace as it exists today, and providing families with a basic understanding of how they can start making more impact investments more effectively… Read More