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Using charitable giving strategies to enhance the tax-efficiency of your donations plays a vital role in maximizing the impact of your gifts. To make the most of your charitable gifts and achieving high-impact philanthropy, take the time at year-end and during the year to review these giving strategies that include different ways to give, knowing and understanding gifts that protect assets and pay income, and giving from other entities such as donor-advised fund gifts.

Families are reconsidering their motivations for giving and how their philanthropy carries forward their values, aims, and objectives. It’s promoting deeper intentionality, humility, empathy, understanding, and trust. These shifts are prompting families to reflect on what they seek to build now and how it informs their legacy. It’s imperative to shift legacy from a reactive construct to an emergent one that serves as a guide and measure of accountability.

Through interviews with dozens of donors, Legacy in Family Philanthropy: A Modern Framework, explores big concepts, such as how the ever-evolving idea of legacy relates to values-driven giving and a commitment to impact. It also explores practical matters, such as how multigenerational families can—and do—navigate conversations about legacy.

Through a survey and series of interviews with members of 20 U.S.-based, multi-generational family philanthropic systems, researchers found that as families evolve, they face common dilemmas regarding their philanthropy—most critically, the choices they make about balancing the individual philanthropic priorities of their members with a collective family philanthropic endeavor. The study’s standout finding was that the creation of a robust family philanthropy “system” was vital to providing outlets for families’ increasingly diverse philanthropic interests.

The explosion of the use of philanthropic vehicles, coupled with massive intergenerational wealth transfer, means that affluent families are giving in more ways, both collectively and individually. Taking a deeper look, researchers found that as families evolve, they face common dilemmas regarding their philanthropy—most critically, the choices they make about balancing the individual philanthropic priorities of their members with a collective family philanthropic endeavor.

Based on “The Stanford PACS Guide to Effective Philanthropy” and “The Philanthropy Toolkit: An Introduction to Giving Effectively,” this Charitable Giving Guide provides donors with a comprehensive resource to help maximize the impact of their philanthropic giving. By selecting one or more sections that align with your most immediate needs, you can tailor your experience by the topics that interest you.

For your philanthropy to be meaningful and effective, it is important to define, refine, and periodically revisit your philanthropic purpose: to understand your motivations for giving, the collective values that guide your philanthropy, and establish clarity around the various priorities and approaches your family will utilize in its giving. Through this worksheet and interactive program session, learn how to refine the “why” behind your philanthropy and connect your philanthropic purpose to the broader change you wish to see in the world.

Philanthropy continues to wield disproportionate power today. However, a more nuanced conception of shared power has emerged and has spurred an increasing number of funders and ecosystem partners to become more open about the inequities of and within philanthropy. With the goal of moving the practice of philanthropy away from its inequitable origins and practices, this report provides insights and conceptual frameworks and actionable resources that can enable funders to create equitable processes and practices.