Navigating Your Family's Philanthropic Future Across Generations

Principal Findings and Outlook

Principal Findings and Outlook

Cause first:

Preserving and transferring family traditions, values and/or existing philanthropic activities

Changing direction and/ or starting a new journey through novel or different philanthropic activities

“ Climate change is my single biggest motivator . If we don’t think about this as a planet, but more of a spaceship where we’re destroying the life-support systems on board, and we don’t have any backup, what motivates me is that my children will live on this spaceship, and their children, and so on. I think that climate change goes well beyond the very basic future of humanity.” Male philanthropist, Europe, 2nd gen

Many families see giving as a way to protect and share their legacy, traditions or values, especially when it comes to involving the next generation. There may be a desire to adapt to new and changing circumstances by taking a fresh approach to family giving. After all, solutions that worked well in the past might not work quite as well in today’s rapidly changing world. “My parents were the driving force. We look at them as this is their legacy . Now it’s part of the glue that holds the family together . It’s something that everyone can relate to. The business is so complex now that, even though all of us grew up working in it, not everybody works in the business anymore and it’s become very complex.” Female philanthropist, North America, 2nd gen

Family first:

“We don’t have a proper structure, but because our value is that family comes first and we would never do something that would upset or intentionally upset or go against what a family member could want [in our philanthropy], we make sure everybody has an equal voice in it.” Female philanthropist, Europe, 3rd gen

Cause and family:

“The foundation has a twofold objective : it has to be impactful, and it also has to reinforce the cohesion within the family. I was really glad to see the other two families’ groups being interested and increasingly involved.” Female philanthropist, Europe, 6th gen

“There’s a sort of continuous and ongoing demand to become more impactful, be more innovative, be conscious of what the organizations we fund need, be aware of what they think of us. We want to make a difference, but I don’t think we see the need for anyone to know that we played a role. If legacy is about others knowing about it, then I don’t think we care. We haven’t named the foundation after the family; we are relatively discreet but remain transparent . We simply just want to have impact.” Male philanthropist, Europe, 2nd gen

Cause and business:

“We started out purely philanthropic, giving money to NGOs that we thought were based on our values. Then, we’ve slowly taken the aim to become more strategic , connecting our corporate social responsibility or corporate social value to the strategic companies’ actually business.” Female philanthropist, Europe, 2nd gen

Cause, family, and business:

Typically, one dominant factor drives individuals or families to engage in philanthropy. Nevertheless, it is likely that the true motivation is a combination of these different factors, with an emphasis on helping others ( see Figure 11 ). Figure 11: Motivations for giving

“We have a plan about collecting all or some of our foundations, our family office, our businesses, and making them all into something we could become the collective impact . Because, if we could get all our resources together, we could have a really big impact. The benefits for the companies and for the family offices and foundation, is that we can all brand ourselves under this same thing, which gives a huge internal and external branding potential.” Female philanthropist, Europe, 5th gen

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Navigating Your Family’s Philanthropic Future Across Generations

Navigating Your Family’s Philanthropic Future Across Generations