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Realizing your philanthropic goals begins with a conversation. Every engagement begins with a conversation about what matters most to our client. We explore your interests and passions, what you’d like to accomplish, and begin formulating a strategy with you.
Individuals and families
Wherever you are on the philanthropic continuum: just beginning to formalize your giving, looking to be more strategic and effective or thinking about your legacy, the "footprint" you’d like to leave and how it could involve the next generation, we can help.
The starting point can include:
- Developing or clarifying your personal mission
- Assessing your previous and current giving to determine how aligned it is with your interests and passions
- Defining the scope of your desired involvement in the charitable giving process—how much or how little you want to participate
- Developing the guidelines, protocols and tools needed to support your giving
- Conducting issue area research and environmental scans
- Together with your advisors, exploring the vehicle options for supporting your philanthropy or, if you already have a trust or foundation, ensuring that the necessary governance and protocols are in place
- Constructing a strategy with actionable steps that will help you achieve the impact you want to have
Closely-held or family-owned businesses
The approach to working with a company is similar to that of working with a family. The first step is to understand the intent, the purpose, of the philanthropic activities. Is the intent related to reputation? To build customer loyalty? To improve employee morale? To coordinate corporate giving with the owner’s giving for maximized impact? To be a good member of the community? All of these are valid reasons for corporate philanthropy. The legacy of a company is no different than that of an individual. How that company is perceived can be important to profitability and operating efficiency.
A business’s philanthropy is far more effective if it is synergistic with the corporate vision and aligned with the company’s marketing or business strategies. It should also respond to the needs and interests of stakeholders: the employees, the customers, the community(ies) in which the company is located.
We work with the key decision maker(s) to design a philanthropic process that achieves clearly defined objectives, tied to measurable benchmarks. We encourage our clients to incorporate their philanthropy into their marketing and outreach materials as well as communications with employees or customers. As a business and marketing strategy, effective and visible philanthropy can have an impact on the bottom line that more than returns on the investment.
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