The SO is a little known vehicle that can be used by families to give back to their communities during their lifetimes, especially if they want to use stock in their family businesses to fund the gifts. The SO is described in IRC Section 509(a)(3).
Philanthropic Mission and Strategies
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What Gives? How to Add Value Through Philanthropy
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Family giving can be wonderfully gratifying as well as a bit messy. That goes double when several generations with different agendas run the family foundation. At the FOX Fall Forum, family members and foundation executives engaged in a lively discussion on how to effectively address questions related to family philanthropy.
Foundations Benefit From Wisdom of the Ages
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The day-to-day operations of a family foundation are naturally consumed by details such as grant reviews, donation formulas and site analyses. Though important work, family foundations focus less attention on the basic questions: Why give? What difference does it make?
We hear much these days about how difficult it is to put together a career. The "younger" generation seeks more than jobs. They want their work to be fulfilling and to make a difference, and they need to earn a salary that they can live on, have medical benefits and maybe even save enough to one day retire. This is a tall order in these times of corporate and government downsizing and greater competition among nonprofits for shrinking resources.
Donors' charitable gifts to their family foundations are not always administered by successor trustees in the manner in which originally intended. Donors must carefully articulate a mission for the organization — their private foundation — that will be the repository of a significant portion of their wealth.
Community Foundations Bring Unexpected Resources
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The family office is often called upon to organize and staff family charitable endeavors. Community foundations can be a resource for the family office by providing information, insight, technical know-how, and alternate means of funding and conducting a family's charitable activities.
Involving the Next Generation and Watching Them Grow
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Our advice to anyone hesitating to bring about an intergenerational family foundation because the time does not seem right or there are too many family issues to confront is — just get started. There is no better time than now to have the satisfaction of helping others and, at the same time, to give your family the opportunity to grow and to discover the pleasures of working together.
This first national study explores the topic of family philanthropy through the family office including opportunities and challenges, perspectives and experiences of practitioners and family members with the family office structure. This is a collaborative project of the National Center for Family Philanthropy, Threshold Group, and FOX.
Charitable planning can be an important part not only of managing income and estate taxes, but of engaging the family and strengthening family values. Adding in a multigenerational component can make it even more meaningful and compelling. Just as every family is unique, so is the philanthropic approach where communication is key and there is more than one way to involve a family in philanthropy.
The field of philanthropy has primarily been built around the more tactical aspects and the how of giving while taking the why for granted.