When Philanthropy Connects to the Bigger Family Picture

Connecting family values, wealth decisions, and philanthropy over time

Last week, I facilitated another session for Daylight’s Impact Philanthropy Advisor learners, focused on how donors can expand their impact beyond traditional grantmaking.

We looked at three broad levers:

• Influence: communications, relationships, and advocacy to help produce stronger outcomes

• Leverage: donor collaboratives, giving circles, and platforms that help people combine resources and increase reach

• Civic action: community-led change through movements, mutual aid, and crowdfunding

The case study gave us a lot to discuss, including business succession, investment vehicles, estate planning, and philanthropy. But one thing kept coming up for me, as it so often does in this work: Values.

These Decisions Are More Connected Than They Seem

For high-net-worth families, philanthropy usually does not sit in its own separate box.

A family may be thinking about what happens to a business in the next generation, how assets should be invested, how much wealth should pass to children, what belongs in an estate plan, and what role philanthropy should play now and over time.

Those can feel like very different conversations. But many of the questions underneath them are the same.

What matters to each person?

What values does the family share?

What do they want their wealth to make possible?

What do they want to do together?

And where should individual family members have room to make their own choices?

Philanthropy can be a really useful place to have these conversations because it gives families something concrete to work through together. They are not only talking about values in the abstract. They are deciding how those values show up in real choices.

Families and Their Philanthropy Change - One Story

Donors’ interests evolve. Their understanding of philanthropy grows. Families change too.

Parents may begin their giving around a set of issues that matter deeply to them. As children become adults, they may bring very different interests, experiences, and ideas about what impact should look like.

That does not mean everyone has to agree.

In fact, part of thoughtful next-generation philanthropy can be helping younger family members develop their own philanthropic voice while also figuring out where the family wants to act together.

One family I had the pleasure of working with was facing exactly this challenge. The mother, a wonderful woman in her late 80s, wanted her two adult children, both in their 50s, to begin doing philanthropy together. She no longer wanted to make the giving decisions herself. The complication was that her children did not even know they were successors to her donor advised fund or that this transition was coming.

After talking separately with all three family members, it became clear that the siblings were not ready to make all of their giving decisions together. So rather than force collaboration, we created a structure that gave each of her children room to develop their own interests. Each received one-third of the annual grantmaking budget to direct with support, and we set aside the remaining third as a collaborative grantmaking pool.

For that shared portion, I drew on what I had learned about the family’s history, wealth story, and overlapping interests to research and recommend opportunities they could consider together. They did not have to agree on every recommendation, but in practice, they found common ground.

It was not a perfect “family philanthropy” model, and that was the point. It fit who they were at that moment. They each had space for their own giving, while still beginning to build something shared. What that looks like five or ten years from now may be completely different.

For some families, that might mean having shared priorities for part of their giving while giving each family member room to support causes of their own. It might mean involving younger generations in nonprofit research, site visits, or grant decisions before asking them to take on larger responsibilities. Sometimes it simply means making space for honest conversations about what each person cares about and why.

The Tool Should Follow What the Family Is Trying to Do

This is also why I do not think the charitable vehicle or funding tool should be the starting point.

A donor collaborative, giving circle, advocacy strategy, donor advised fund, private foundation, impact investment, or traditional grant can all be useful.

The better question is: What is the family actually trying to accomplish, and which approach best supports that?

For one family, leverage may mean joining other donors so their resources can go further. For another, influence may mean using relationships and networks to bring more attention or funding to an issue. Another family may be drawn to community-led approaches that put more decision-making power with the people closest to the issue.

And that strategy may change. Families learn. New generations become involved. Interests shift. The way they want to participate may look very different five or ten years from now.

What Do You Want Your Wealth to Mean?

For me, one of the most interesting parts of philanthropic advising is helping families connect all of these pieces that touch their wealth and their family.

That includes understanding why they give, what they want their wealth to mean beyond the assets or businesses themselves, and how they want to create impact together and individually over time.

Not every financial, estate, or family decision needs to become a philanthropic conversation. But these decisions often come back to many of the same things: values, family, purpose, responsibility, and what people hope to leave behind.

When those conversations are connected, philanthropy can become much more than a series of charitable gifts.

It can become a way for families to learn together, make decisions together, and put their values into practice over time.

COR works with individuals and families to connect philanthropy with the bigger conversations around wealth, family, and legacy. If your family is thinking through what you want to do together, what should remain individual, or how your giving may evolve across generations, we welcome the conversation.