Recent Posts - Blip - Blip no en http://blip.tv Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:09:18 +0000 Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:09:18 +0000 B1C2481C-395A-11DD-A6BA-E10932A9B4AB http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical-philanthropy-podcast-brian-gallagher-996309 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 996309 989986 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-06-13T15:09:18Z English 0 0 0 1066 AbzoOQI http://blip.tv/play/AbzoOQI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post996309&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/989986 Default Category philanthropy nonprofits Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:09:18 +0000 philanthropy, nonprofits http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png philanthropy, nonprofits ]]> Tactical Philanthropy Podcast: Brian Gallagher 167DD6B4-28D9-11DD-B805-DF73FC3E845A http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical-philanthropy-podcast-mark-kramer-936460 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 936460 930030 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-05-23T15:01:14Z English 0 0 0 929 AbmUcAI http://blip.tv/play/AbmUcAI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post936460&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/930030 Default Category Fri, 23 May 2008 15:01:14 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tactical Philanthropy Podcast: Mark Kramer 2355D842-0CBD-11DD-85C2-96F7771CBC91 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical-philanthropy-podcast-fred-krupp-841661 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 841661 835236 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-04-17T20:30:37Z English 0 0 0 1039 AbOwIQI http://blip.tv/play/AbOwIQI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post841661&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/835236 Business philanthropy Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:30:37 +0000 philanthropy http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png philanthropy ]]> Tactical Philanthropy Podcast: Fred Krupp B2C446AE-EA02-11DC-80A2-C834E0050EEC http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical-philanthropy-podcast-alberto-ibarguen-722211 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 722211 716120 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-03-04T15:50:22Z English 0 0 0 1595 AayLBwI http://blip.tv/play/AayLBwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post722211&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/716120 Default Category Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:50:22 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tactical Philanthropy Podcast: Alberto Ibarguen BD8430B6-C2C7-11DC-88C6-EF9A26BC40C6 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical-philanthropy-podcast-phil-buchanan-604238 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 604238 598489 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-14T17:40:04Z English 0 0 0 1286 AaTxMgI http://blip.tv/play/AaTxMgI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post604238&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
An Interview with Phil Buchanan of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. ]]> http://blip.tv/file/598489 Business philanthropy Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:40:04 +0000 philanthropy http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png philanthropy ]]> Tactical Philanthropy Podcast: Phil Buchanan 847F7962-BF00-11DC-8BB5-E3587ADD5530 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/episode-594901 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 594901 589196 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-09T22:16:25Z English 0 0 0 1016 AaSoOQI http://blip.tv/play/AaSoOQI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post594901&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/589196 Default Category Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:16:25 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Test 073B47F2-BE4B-11DC-BE04-D53BE1673B09 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical_philanthropy_podcast_-_jeff_martin-593077 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593077 587377 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-09T00:37:16Z English 0 0 0 1010 AaSaGQI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaGQI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593077&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
]]> http://blip.tv/file/587377 Default Category Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:37:16 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tactical_Philanthropy_Podcast_-_Jeff_Martin http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ B329652C-BE4A-11DC-B993-B08C9B0AF2BA http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/jed-emerson-interview-593074 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593074 587374 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-09T00:34:55Z English 0 0 0 1224 AaSaFgI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaFgI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593074&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Sean Stannard-Stockton: Hello, and welcome to the Tactical Philanthropy podcast. I'm Sean Stannard-Stockton, author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog, and Principal and Director of Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital. My guest today is Jed Emerson. Jed is a senior fellow with Generation Foundation, of Generation Investment Management, and a fellow with the Sad Business School at Oxford University. He is published widely on issues related to how we create, invest, and manage value. Thank you for being here today, Jed.Jed Emerson: Thanks very much for having me.Sean: So tell me, how did you end up in this line of work?Jed: Well, I think it's a logical extension from being involved in working in the non-profit field for a number of years, actually since I was a kid. I started as a peer tutor in Spanish Harlem when I was 13, and then when I was 26, started my first non-profit, Larkin Street Services, which was a community-based organization working with homeless and street kids in San Francisco.And from that experience until I was about 30, basically, really working with non-profits and seeing the challenges that non-profits have in raising money and being effective in their work. When I had the opportunity to do some work with George Roberts and with the Roberts Foundation, I really kind of jumped at it as a chance to kind of get over to the other side of the checkbook as it were, and explore some innovative ways to engage in foundation practice.Sean: Did you have a background in economics or anything like that?Jed: No, actually, my background is purely in social work, initially. My first Master's degree was in social work and administration, I got that when I was 22. And then I actually went back when I was in my mid-30s and got an MBA in order to continue to do more of the work I was moving toward.Sean: So I think you're most closely-aligned in most peoples' minds with phrases like double bottom line, blended value, and social enterprise. Would you start off and tell us kind of what you mean by the phrase blended value, and why you think it's important?Jed: Sure. Well, basically, when I was working with the Roberts Foundation, I was founder, with George Roberts and Melinda Tuan, of the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund. And what we were doing was using philanthrophic capital to invest in market-rate businesses that were run by non-profit organizations in order to employ formerly homeless people. And so we were right in the middle of this challenge of really trying to understand how do you use funds, and we think of all of our philanthropy as investment funds, if you will, in order to pursue a social end, but using the vehicle of a business enterprise to do that.And so it immediately raised questions with regard to, what does it really mean to be a non-profit or for-profit, and what does it mean to invest philanthropy, philanthropic dollars, as opposed to market-rate capital. And then, of course, you start to get into the areas of people who are investing market-rate capital in order to create social and environmental good, and I found over the period of years that I was having multiple conversations with people in different silos of activity who were coming to this conversation from the various perspectives.But at the end of the day it struck me that what everybody seems to be talking about is really a question of value, and how do you think about the nature of value, how do you maximize value through organization, and how do you invest in generating the greatest value possible.And so as I was moving through these various discussions with mainstream investors, with philanthropists, with, "double bottom line" folks, I really began to think of this all as a blend. And, at the end of the day, value itself really is non-divisible, and what we've done has been to create, in essence, a bifurcated value proposition, that asks us to make choices between non-profit and for-profit, or philanthropy versus market-rate investing.And I would argue that those are really artificial choices we're being asked to make, because at the end of the day, I think all of us really recognize the fact that the value of what we create in the course of our lives really transcends those types of categories and legalisms and that my main theme has been to really try to get people to focus on what is it we're really trying to do here, which is value creation, and then what are the different vehicles by which we can pursue that.Sean: So if I understand blended value correctly, every project launched by a for-profit or a non-profit is going to create some amount of blended value, and I would think that if you would look at philanthropic vehicles like private foundations, they may be most interested in really understanding that impact, in the sense that for-profit investors may have some sort of personal desire to make sure that the social value they're creating is at least positive.But foundations maybe have some sort of obligation. I bring this up because in your recent op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, you discuss the Gates Foundation investment policy, which of course has had a lot of attention recently. What I was wondering is if you'd talk about, private foundations and how they might approach the measurement of the blended value of their investments.Jed: Well, I think there's two parts to this. One is, we first have to really recognize the fact that the reason we've created this legal entity called foundations is in order to pursue some sort of social or environmental or public good, if you will. And so that really needs to be the measure of performance for these institutions. And what has happened is, because of the way that many private foundations and family foundations are structured, that there's an initial endowment, and then the revenue that comes off of that endowment in the form of investment income is distributed as grants, we've allowed ourselves to fall into a business model that says that a 5% payout, which is kind of the standard measure of grant-making performance for foundations, is the focus of our work.So we see all this activity around strategic philanthropy, and how to be a good grant-maker, and this type of thing, when in fact 95% of the assets of these institutions, it's often invested without any reference to the organization's mission or purpose, and oftentimes actually are invested in companies that are contributing to some of the very problems that the grant-making side of the house is trying to address. And so, when we think about how should philanthropy measures the impact of its work, I think we first have to ask, how should philanthropy go about investing in its work, and is a grant-making-only approach really the best way to go? Because, again, what we're talking about is a business model that says that it would be OK to use 5% of your assets to drive 100% of your institutional mission and 95% of your assets would at best be neutral to that mission.I just think that there are many ways that we can leverage the assets of philanthropy in a broader, more effective way, than simply grant-making alone, although grant-making, of course, is an important part of that whole conversation.Sean: Well, I definitely agree that the endowment, if invested in program-related investments, or in some sort of social enterprise, can certainly help a foundation maximize their impact. The Gates Foundation issue has somewhat revolved around socially-responsible investing, the simple screening out certain types of companies. And in your op-ed, you talk about that as something that you agree with as well. But I have a hard time understanding how a foundation refusing to buy publicly-traded stock in companies which they believe are creating negative social returns does anything to actually minimize that social damage. Do you think that social screening actually minimizes negative social returns?Jed: Well, actually, I think, again, I would step back from the issue of social screening, and want to look at the array of tools and strategies foundations might be able to draw upon. I'm not saying that all foundations should do social screening, or that they shouldn't. I'm saying that social screening is one of a whole set of instruments that they can draw upon to pursue their mission, and the right answer for any of these foundations is really going to be different depending on the mission of the foundation, depending on their tolerance for risk, depending on the type of grant-making and social and environmental mission they're pursuing. These types of things will all be the factors that determine whether or not social investing through screened funds is in fact something that makes sense for a foundation to pursue.I'd also say that when we talk about social investing, we need to, again, recognize the fact that the field of social investing has really evolved well beyond the screened fund activity that really dominated, let's say, 15 years ago. And increasingly you're seeing groups such as Innovest which provides analysis to fund managers that helps them find companies within a given categories that are best in class as they relate to social, environmental and other issues as well as financial performance.The idea that by engaging in screened fund investing, that some sort of lower alpha or return to investment is required, is at odds to some of the more current investing activities, folks like Goldman Sachs or Generation Asset Management, which I am affiliated with through their foundation. These folks are achieving competitive returns, but they are looking at how social and environmental factors affects financial performances over the long haul as well. I think that is the sense of integration that I am really looking forward to when I talk about blended value, more than investing in tobacco and firearms, trafficking humans or something. Right?Sean: Right, right. Why don't you take out your crystal ball for a moment and tell us what you think the typical Private Foundation investment portfolio will look like in twenty years, once the kind of philanthropic capital market has developed more fully.Jed: Well, I think in the same way we see the variety of asset classes that the investors can choose from in traditional investing, I think we are seening the evolution of the same, or a parallel or complementary of that investment opportunities within the social capital markets. For example, ten years ago, it wasn't possible to enter into the securitization of micro finance loans. You couldn't buy micro financed bonds, for example. Today, you are actually able to do that through a variety of boutique offerings. In ten, twenty, thirty years, we'll see increasingly vibrant capital market of exchange, that's one whole area of innovation that we will see.I think there will be another area of innovation in terms of non-profit finance, in possible bond offerings as well, because we got a situation where, increasingly people are interested in the question of how to take non-profit organizations and demonstrated proven social impact at the community level and really amp that up and take that to scale. The fact is, you don't have an option of an IPO or private placement offerings to be able to finance the growth of those types of organizations.Yet the same non-profits are groups that pay their bills consistently year in and year out, consistently hits their goals for revenues generation and growth. The issue is, is there a better way for us to finance that growth in the future beyond simply extending your individual donor base, for example. Figuring out a way to securitize the future of the non-profit sector, is one of the options people are pursuing and becoming one more of the growth areas within philanthropy and social investing.If you think about the third area would be community development venture capital, and the whole growth we are seeing of the ability of people to invest in business development in inner cities, green development, clean technology, there is a whole host of things that will fall under this area of private equity investing options. Those areas are obviously growing and will continue to expand in the future.Finally, I also talked about the whole area of program related investing. I think, especially when you talk about foundations. Again the purpose of foundations is to create and maximize public good, and so the idea that the only measure of performance for the portfolio is financial, to my mind, is simply wrong. If you could achieve social environmental value creation through taking some kind of below market return, accepting, let's say, three to five percent on a financial return basis as oppose to eight to sixteen percent. But in exchange for that concessionary rate of return, you are actually able to document a greater social impact, why wouldn't you want to put funds in those ventures as well?So I think what we will see is the evolution of more and more of these new asset classes that folks will be able to invest in much as you do today in traditional asset classes. Now the trick here is that, it's going to take a while before we get to that level and I think we need to be cautious in term of how we evolve those merging market within social investing, and we want to make sure that we are doing it with transparency, with third party rating system, with the same type of insurance risk factor as you would see in the for-profit space. In time, I think all of those things will come forward. It is really quite an exciting time to be involved in this conversation.Sean: It seems like there is a real acceleration both in interest and in development in a lot of these types of products. It should be an exciting couple of decades for philanthropy for sure.Jed: The thing that is striking is what we are really witnessing, I think, is coming together different schools. You got folks who are historically in the non-profit sector who are increasingly taking business acumens, skills, and frameworks and applying them toward community ends.You are also seeing a whole set of people who are hitting their mid-forties and older. Basically had a great success in life and looking for, what's next? What's the big challenge? They way they created value in the market place and in business is the way they think about value creation in these areas as well. So, when you see a Google.org, for example, get launched, where they are taking in the order of a billion dollars in assets, and they are going to be investing that in for-profit enterprises that generates some social/environmental value, that's very exciting.When you see things like Wall Street Without Walls, which is a mission that connects, it's mainstream Wall Street analysts with community development and other organizations in order to really explore how to engage in financial engineering in order to expand the capital options for folks. Again, that is very exciting to see. I think we are watching this blending of vision and practice in a way that is targeting the challenging opportunity of maximizing value of the whole. Again, I think it's a really exciting time for me in engaging in this kind of work.Sean: Absolutely. We have already gone a little over time, but I want to end this interview with a question from one of my readers on the Tactical Philanthropy Blog. He kind of sets up a theoretical situation, and ends with a question. The question is: If you had an individual who has financial returns from a business that produces negative social returns, and that person then uses the financial returns to invest in non-profit social enterprises, it seems like the actual calculations of the double bottom line result will be difficult or impossible to figure out. So, why then do you talk about a double bottom line as if the social philanthropy returns can be blended and mathematically expressed with accuracy?Jed: Well, because I think that at the end of the day, if you think you could rob Peter to pay Paul and get away with it, it's just wrong. It's the wrong way to think about this. I think that people seems to assume the econometrics we use to track financial performance and form business activity were handed down from God to the HP12C of Alan Greenspan or something. Right? In fact, these are all metrics that we have looked at and collectively decided that we embrace at the same time we said there are social and environmental factors that we don't think we can quantify, so we are just going to set them aside and not even going to take them into consideration.So in essence, what we are doing is engaging in off balance debt and pretending that somehow that it doesn't affect the capital of the returns of our investing in the organizations we are concerned with. What is going to happen is, we have already seen this, if you look at the enhanced initiative which basically is a program working with finance analysts to support their work at taking extra financial performance issues and factors those into their analysis of their companies and firms. That's a very innovated way, which people are moving beyond their limitations of traditional econometrics.If you look at the experimentations of the New Economics foundations in London and other folks around the world are engaged in regarding social return in investment methodologies, I think we are learning more and more about how to take the qualitative aspect of performance and represent that on a quantitative basis in order to integrated into our analytics and this is all in an emerging kind of process. Do we know how to do all of this definitively now? Certainly not.Do we have potential to understand how to do this in the future? Certainly so. That's really the challenge and the opportunity, because if we continue to pretend that [unintelligible] and not be accountable for in the long haul, that's just wrong to my mind because ultimately, the chickens are coming home to roost. There are ways we can recognize what the opportunities are for all of us in this work and really incentivise companies to perform on a basis that creates the greatest value not only for shareholders but for stakeholders as well.Sean: Well Jed, thank you so much for your time.Jed: Yeah, it's my pleasure. It's been a lot of fun.Sean: Maybe we can have you back another time. Thanks a lot.Jed: Thank you. ]]> http://blip.tv/file/587374 Default Category Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:34:55 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Jed Emerson Interview http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 4992342C-BE4A-11DC-8C43-DAC3E5CF5D5D http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical_philanthropy_podcast_-_daniel_ben-horin-593071 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593071 587371 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-09T00:31:58Z English 0 0 0 1543 AaSaEwI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaEwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593071&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
]]> http://blip.tv/file/587371 Default Category Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:31:58 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tactical_Philanthropy_Podcast_-_Daniel_Ben-Horin http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ C7B8E77A-BE49-11DC-B18A-D4555F04836E http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical_philanthropy_podcast_-_clara_miller-593065 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593065 587366 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-09T00:28:20Z English 0 0 0 900 AaSaDQI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaDQI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593065&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
]]> http://blip.tv/file/587366 Default Category Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:28:20 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tactical_Philanthropy_Podcast_-_Clara_Miller http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 6F484D34-BE48-11DC-BC9F-C2E136536B96 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tracy-gary-interview-593039 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593039 587340 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-09T00:18:42Z English 0 0 0 1125 AaSZcwI http://blip.tv/play/AaSZcwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593039&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
[intro music]Sean Stannard-Stockton: Hello and welcome to the "Tactical Philanthropy Podcast". I'm Sean Stannard Stockton, author of the "Tactical Philanthropy" blog and Principal and Director of Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital.My guest today is Tracy Gary. Tracy has been a donor activist and philanthropist for more than 25 years. She educates and supports donors, family foundations, financial service organizations and non profits about the stewardship of money, leadership and philanthropy. Tracy has founded or co founded 18 non profits. She is currently the Director of Inspired Legacies.Thank you for joining us today, Tracy.Tracy Gary: Thank you, Sean. Glad to be with you.Sean: Well first of all, how did you end up in this line of work?Tracy: Well I was very blessed. I grew up in a family that had money and who were extremely philanthropic themselves. They lived in New York and Florida and Minnesota and Wisconsin.My mom was a Pillsbury descendant, and my great great grandfather had invented the dial telephone, so it was kind of one of those wonderful mergers. And they, as a result, were involved in all the communities that they lived in, and raised my brother and myself to be very philanthropic, and also gave us a million dollars by the time we were 21 and said, "This is an investment for you. Put it back into the community." So we did.By the time I was 35 I had actually seen about 400 non profits and worked with about 25 directly, and had given away that million dollars.Sean: Now I have read that you have made the decision to live on just $30,000 or $40,000 a year, although you clearly make an income above that. How did you come to that decision? That's quite a radical decision.Tracy: Well I'll say it's probably up to closer to $40,000 $45, 000 right now. I saw how much wisdom capital and creative capital there was out in the community, and decided, having grown up with a family that had helicopters and planes and 36 people working with them, that actually I preferred a simpler life and that I really wanted to change, during my lifetime, the condition of poverty, and to also give many other people an opportunity to have a better life.So living simply just matches my values and principles, and it means I am also able to give away about half of my income each year, and I love that. It gives me just great joy. My greatest joy really is in giving and in building community through that giving.Sean: Part of the mission of the "Tactical Philanthropy" blog is to build out a network of advisors and major donors, and bring the conversation into one place. I know at Inspired Legacies you are really focusing on building out advisor networks and helping advisors who are talking to major donors. Tell us something about what you do at Inspired Legacies.Tracy: Inspired Legacies is a non profit philanthropic and legacy planning firm. As a non profit we offer our services, for the most part, free to donors who are interested in doing planning and having discussions about legacy planning. We offer it, actually, on a pay it forward model, so we have other donors who will give us $10,000 and say, "I want to help other families do what you have just given me, free, to do because it was so useful to our family."We also work with non profits and we work with advisors who are interested in value based planning and value based philanthropy, and really looking for a long view. What is it that I want to change and preserve during my lifetime? How do I align my investments with those values? How do I inform my family and my trusted advisors what my goals are? And how can they help me, as a team and as a community, to stay in alignment with those values?That might mean socially responsible investing. That might mean making choices about whether I give more of my money during my lifetime or at my death, or whether I give my kids money when they are in their early 20s or later. So these are both soft questions that have to do with the emotional issues and some of the value based issues, and they are also the referral issues of, "Do I have the best trusted advisor team?"Our work with advisors is very transformative. We are interested in working with a field that heretofore had, for the most part, had a bottom line to it. Mostly selling, the interest in working with donors or people who were philanthropists had, for the most part, been about selling product.We think it is very important that businesses survive and that advisors make a living, and make a good living, but we encourage advisors and we have also curriculum, worksheets, workbooks, and we design actually, custom design for companies, training for their advisors on how to work with high net worth individuals.Over the last 30 years I have had a chance to work with over 6,000 donors and their families, in all 50 states, and much of that work has been done in workshops; but in at least 3,000 of them I have gone door to door and I have actually met with donors in their homes or at their family meetings. So we understand the donor mind, both based on my own background, having grown up in a high net worth family, and exposure to donors that are all in the top one percent.What we know is that most donors feel that their advisors are not listening to them, are even, by and large, continuing to guide them toward investments that are not in alignment with their values, don't have a lot of philanthropic expertise, and don't have a lot of philanthropic knowledge. They tend not to rely on their investment management teams or even their wealth advisory teams for some answers to a lot of philanthropic support or partnership.I think the field is changing, and what is incredibly exciting is that there are now, like your own EnsembleCapital.com, the fact that they even have you as a philanthropic advisor within the firm. One of the things that is just extremely important is that the field, as the field changes, we have a new generation of people who understand that there are high net worth individuals whose primary goal with their money is actually to give as much as they can. That was certainly my goal as an individual.What we also love doing with advisors is sharing some of our tools. We are the largest provider of donor education tools in the country. We hope, over the next three years, to become a resource and one of the largest providers of legacy planning tools that are specific to philanthropy, in the country.Those tools include giving plans, a values based legacy plan, that actually really what we call, thanks to mentors and guys like Phil Cubeta, who has been in the legacy planning industry for a long time. We have seen that there are prudent plans that people really put together, and there are inspired plans, as we call them.Inspired plans really take into consideration the philanthropic goals, the family needs at a higher level, perhaps around giving as well, and do not short shift the interests of the wealthy person and their family in the philanthropy area or in the legacy area. So we are extremely excited to actually get a chance to do some cutting edge work, to create greater transformative philanthropy and legacy planning.Sean: I like the distinction between inspired plans and prudent plans. I have certainly seen donors who have been very effective in their giving, but there is a transformational difference when they are inspired in their giving.Tracy: Right, and there is a disconnect in the field. I think that we all do need good information. The average donor family that I see has $10 million and above $50 million and above in some cases and they feel confident that their investments are going well, but they don't feel that they have a team of people that they are working with.Often they have one trusted advisor who may be a CPA, with very little exposure or interest even in philanthropy. Sometimes they have an investment management firm who will pointedly resist them making, say, a million dollar gift to an organization, a college, university, or a favorite charity that they have, during their lifetime, because they know that assets under management are how they actually get their fees, and if that person gives away that million dollars, actually their fee base may go down.We are really interested in shifting the field, and helping people to understand that if you are truly meeting and listening to the needs of your clients, that client will refer other business to you and replace that million dollars very quickly.And what we have to do is to support donors, to take the time to actually do this kind of planning. The average donor isn't spending enough time in their philanthropic planning, their financial planning, or their estate planning. We try to get them to have an integrated approach to all three of these kinds of plans, which makes them very happy when they've done it, because they feel sort of a high.A freedom sets in that says gee, I really do believe that the planet is in trouble, so maybe I need to think about my consumption patterns. Maybe if I have a choice of buying a car, I should buy a Prius. Or maybe if I have a choice between a chemical company and some other company, I might choose something that seems to be more environmentally friendly, or has better ratings.So, maybe instead of the whole dilemma of, do we go for just income in our foundation portfolio, or do we actually try to do a mix of values so that we end up having a more socially responsible portfolio that matches our philanthropy. These are all critical questions that take time and take focus, and responsibility, really, on the part of the client to make a decision as to which way they want to go.And we're there to support and to accompany, and in some way to be coaches, a wealth coach, along the way, to encourage clients to actually complete these stocks, to complete this decision making process, not to let the advisers go hanging. We love to work in partnership with wealth advisory firms and other financial institutions, banks, and others, in their wealth departments.Sean: I think that that resistance that many investment managers have to actually assisting philanthropic families with their goals is a big part of the reason why Ensemble Capital exists today.Tracy: That's great.Sean: You know if you look at the history of philanthropy, if you wanted to, you could trace modern philanthropy back to 1889 and Carnegie's publication of the essay "Wealth". I believe that we're undergoing kind of a second great wave of philanthropy, and that we're in the early stages of that wave developing.But why is it then that there is such an under developed field of professional advisers for philanthropists? I mean, if you look at most other fields, you would say, well, by now you would have credentials, and you would have, a philanthropist would say, I'll go to my philanthropic adviser, whoever it might be. Instead, most donors say, well, I called my CPA and he told me one thing, or I called my lawyer and he told me another thing, and they don't really know where to turn.What do you think is going on in the advisory field? Why is there that problem, and where are we going in the future?Tracy: Well, when I look at the infrastructure that's been created in my lifetime in philanthropy, I'm completely thrilled by the progress. I think that we must understand that, actually, the value of the non profit sector has hardly been recognized until the last 20 years in a significant way. Building the capacity of the non profit sector is a relatively new thing.The noblesse oblige, sort of giving without a lot of intentionality, has been the way of the world until the last 15 or 20 years, and so the advent of venture philanthropy and a lot more growth in the family foundation area and the wealth advisory firm, I mean, think about the institutions that have been created to cater to the wealthy.First of all we've had such a boom in wealth only in the last 20 years that I think a lot of the industry has now extended itself to provide services for newly wealthy families. This is no longer an inherited wealth market; this is actually an earned wealth market.So I'm very pleased with what I see to be the infrastructure. We now have wealth coaches, and Inspired Legacies will be putting a whole new series of wealth coaches up on our website in the next couple of months. We now have philanthropic advisers who are independent. When I was in my 20s there were hardly any.And yet you bring a really important point here, which is that Advisers In Philanthropy, the ones who are a national organizations, that looks to the field, I think, has several hundred members who say that they're in the business really because they care very deeply about philanthropy.I think it's very basic, I think the average corporation that is established is established not with a double bottom line. This concept of double bottom line and being there for values and for service and for community, not just for profit, is again, really a 20 year phenomenon. It's a fairly new motivation for people to say "I'm here to do good."We live in a capitalistic country that really values, actually, profit. So I do believe that there is a turn, and that we're in the middle of the field, basically, coming to terms with the fact that we are not seeing the results that we want to from donors, and the happiness, really from a lot of our client base.What we find is that when you have an investment advisory firm that focuses only on the investment side of the business, not on the relationship side, and not on the meaningful philanthropy side, the clients themselves tend to not be as happy. That I can really say. They're getting good service from the investment advisory firm, but they're not solving some of the basic problems that they have in their lives, where they don't feel quite aligned, or they're not in good communication with their kids or their communities.When we see them, as philanthropic advisers, they speak of the isolation they feel. When we connect a donor to an advisory firm such as your own or others that really are deeply listening to a client, and the breadth of their interests or their dreams, and then help them achieve those dreams as dream makers, through either adjusting the portfolio or recommending insurance or different products, we see breakthrough happen.And we see, you know, a person who may have worked their entire life who is suddenly facing retirement without purpose, come alive at the thought that during their lifetime, that they could create something, another business, but a non profit foundation perhaps, that will enable thousands of people to actually get up and out of poverty, or to bring water to a village.So we see, actually, the return on the investment for doing donor and legacy education by the investment advisory firm, to be tremendous, as well as for the employees, who feel a lot happier being able to manifest the dreams of their clients at a different level.Sean: I think that's exactly right.For listeners who want to learn more about Tracy's reference to a double bottom line, you can download our interview with Jed Emerson.Tracy, I want to end here, we're running a little bit short on time, but I want to end here with a question from a reader. This is probably too big of a question for you to answer in a short take, but maybe you can take a stab at it. They're wondering why you think having a giving plan is important, and what the basic steps are.Tracy: Having a giving plan, like having a legacy plan, is a step by step process that helps you focus on moving your values into the manifestation of other dreams.A good giving plan begins with your values, has you look long term at what it is you want to achieve during your lifetime, and has you sort through issue areas, populations, or problems that you want to solve, or that you might want to address. A population might be, I really want to help immigrants, or I was born in South America, I really want to actually give back to my country. An issue area might be I can't stand the drop out rate that's happening.And I think when we're intentional, and we say these three areas actually are my highest priorities. My highest priority might be the drop out rate, I really want to solve that, and I dare to put a percentage by that, and say, we as a family are going to put 60 70 percent of our money behind this, and then we begin to actually add enormous economic power to that focus. It means that we are no longer putting our money in too many places; we're beginning to actually focus our energy and our volunteer efforts and our skillful means toward that area.So the success of having a giving plan in our work over the last 15 years of creating giving plans for people, is that people really begin to feel very exciting about impact, they can actually see impact at a higher level. It also helps them ward off a lot of requests from many, many people.The average American gets about 300 requests a year, you know, you're able to say, I have a giving plan, I have a legacy plan, I'm not focused on your issue now, thank you very much. And that gives people the freedom to actually get very involved in that which will have the highest impact for their life.Sean: Tracy thanks for joining us.Tracy: Thank you, Sean, thanks so much for your work.Sean: This has been the "Tactical Philanthropy Podcast". You can visit us at tacticalphilanthropy.com. For more information about Tracy Gary, visit inspiredlegacies.org.Thanks for listening. ]]> http://blip.tv/file/587340 Default Category Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:18:42 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tracy Gary Interview http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 0937EE28-BE48-11DC-A762-A79986D0B438 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical_philanthropy_podcast_-_tracy_gary-593031 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593031 587332 file TV-UN 0.0 2008-01-09T00:15:51Z English 0 0 0 AaSZawI http://blip.tv/play/AaSZawI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593031&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
]]> http://blip.tv/file/587332 Default Category Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:15:51 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tactical_Philanthropy_Podcast_-_Tracy_Gary http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ C3852102-A358-11DC-B966-D11A0A56F533 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/forces-for-good-podcast-527988 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 527988 522527 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-12-05T17:37:34Z English 0 0 0 1194 AaCdWAI http://blip.tv/play/AaCdWAI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post527988&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/522527 Default Category Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:37:34 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Forces For Good Podcast B94D49E4-80B2-11DC-BC6F-A1412766119A http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical-philanthropy-october-podcast-444754 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 444754 439522 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-10-22T15:23:21Z English 0 0 0 1265 AZuTNgI http://blip.tv/play/AZuTNgI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post444754&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
An interview with one of the top 50 most influential non-profit leaders in the USA. ]]> http://blip.tv/file/439522 Default Category philanthropy blogging Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:23:21 +0000 philanthropy, blogging http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png philanthropy, blogging ]]> Tactical Philanthropy - October Podcast 2A1F25BE-6535-11DC-A8D8-86E0129129D6 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/cheryl-dahle-387912 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 387912 382875 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-09-17T15:46:32Z English 0 0 0 747 AZfXLAI http://blip.tv/play/AZfXLAI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post387912&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/382875 Default Category Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:46:32 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Cheryl Dahle 8B6C3C7C-3C80-11DC-A346-8929D38AC084 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/chronicle-of-philanthropy-podcast-323667 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 323667 318950 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-07-27T20:32:50Z English 0 0 0 557 AZPhNwI http://blip.tv/play/AZPhNwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post323667&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/318950 Default Category Fri, 27 Jul 2007 20:32:50 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Chronicle of Philanthropy Podcast E26F0C74-33DF-11DC-A896-A5E2A9533134 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical-philanthropy-podcast-jim-canales-310235 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 310235 305566 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-07-16T21:02:38Z English 0 0 0 970 AZL4PwI http://blip.tv/play/AZL4PwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post310235&skin=rss blip-mp3-icon.gif No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/305566 Default Category Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:02:38 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/blip-mp3-icon.gif ]]> Tactical Philanthropy Podcast - Jim Canales 92F45E3C-BE4B-11DC-B6AD-8CB5C128B95A http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/tactical_philanthropy_podcast_-_william_thomson-593083 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593083 587383 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-06-22T04:00:00Z English 0 0 0 753 AaSaHwI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaHwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593083&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
]]> http://blip.tv/file/587383 Default Category Fri, 22 Jun 2007 04:00:00 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Tactical_Philanthropy_Podcast_-_William_Thomson http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 7663358E-1AC9-11DC-9D25-B76268B08216 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/podcast-ws-271209 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 271209 266644 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-06-14T22:49:09Z English 0 0 0 1269 AZDHTQI http://blip.tv/play/AZDHTQI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post271209&skin=rss blip-mp3-icon.gif No license (All rights reserved)
]]> http://blip.tv/file/266644 Default Category Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:49:09 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/blip-mp3-icon.gif ]]> Podcast WS 53558D82-BE4B-11DC-A99A-9C80EF990832 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/paul-shoemaker-interview-593079 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593079 587379 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-06-07T04:00:00Z English 0 0 0 918 AaSaGwI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaGwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593079&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
]]> http://blip.tv/file/587379 Default Category Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:00:00 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Paul Shoemaker Interview http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 21CAE0C0-BE49-11DC-9FFB-CDA3BF617499 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/peter-karoff-interview-593059 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593059 587360 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-04-13T04:00:00Z English 0 0 0 1231 AaSaBwI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaBwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593059&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
[intro music]Sean Stannard-Stockton: Hello there, and welcome to the Tactical Philanthropy podcast. I'm Sean Stannard-Stockton, author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog, and principal and director of Tactical Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital. My guest today is Peter Karoff.Peter is chairman and founder of The Philanthropic Initiative, which can be found on the web at tpi.org. TPI is a nonprofit advisory team that designs, carries out, and evaluates philanthropic programs for individual donors, families, foundations, and corporations. Peter frequently speaks and writes on philanthropic and social issues, and is the author of the book "The World We Want: New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change." Peter, thank you so much for joining us today.Peter Karoff: I'm happy to be with you, Sean.Sean: So, Peter, why don't you start and tell us how it is that you came to found The Philanthropic Initiative.Peter: Well, The Philanthropic Initiative really came out of my own personal history of involvement with more than 30 nonprofit organizations and public policy efforts over many, many years. I was, and still am, fascinated with why some people are generous and others are not, and why some companies do the right things and others are stuck in the sand. And I guess I have really seen that many people want to make the world a better place but often don't know how to go about it.There seemed to be, back in the late '80s, an unrealized potential and a need for an organization -- and perhaps a movement -- that would motivate and help individuals and corporations start philanthropy, do more philanthropy, and do better philanthropy. So that's really how TPI got started.Sean: I certainly know what you mean, that a lot of people want to do something but they don't know how to go about doing it. I think that's one of the tremendous possibilities we have in the philanthropy sector, is to help people learn that. How does TPI do that? How do you help people learn how to go about the process of making change?Peter: Well, the idea was to tap into the motivation for generosity that you just alluded to within our society, and then connect it to community and social change through the vehicle of strategic philanthropy. But what we wanted, really, was more than the rhetoric. I mean, just understanding generosity without connecting it to action is an academic exercise, and identifying need without attempting to solve it is sociology, and funding without a good approach can be wasteful and frustrating.So what we particularly do, we've evolved a way of helping people first find in themselves the values and passions that interest them the most, and then to explore those interests in an approach that would be very much similar to the way people go about investing their money.Strategic philanthropy, as we began talking about it almost 19 years ago, was not a well-known phenomenon except within very large foundations. We brought that process out in a way that became more linear. So today what is accepted -- both nomenclature and process of doing due-diligence, of researching an issue, and understanding the context within which you may make some good decisions, looking at different strategies, evaluating leadership, looking at the capacity of an organization, and then designing interventions that move those programs -- is in fact the way we operate.We do this with families, and with corporations -- and increasingly with community organizations as well -- that we believe are a wonderful, wonderful added value to the field.Sean: You mentioned there, helping people approach it more like how they invest their money. At my firm, Ensemble Capital, we take that approach as well. I just recently posted on my blog about a company called Geneva Global, which uses that exact same language. But I've heard a couple people talk about -- as wonderful as that would be if donors approached their giving in a more proactive, logical way -- that donors really just want to give for emotional reasons. That they don't actually respond to effective giving techniques, they respond to emotional appeals.In your experience working with so many families, do you think that there is a real hunger amongst donors and potential donors to respond in effective, logical ways as opposed to simply emotional ways?Peter: Well I think the two are really joined at the hip. It is, in fact, the heart and the mind combined that make for transformational philanthropy. And I think if it gets too emotional then it -- at the end of the day -- is not satisfying, because you haven't therefore put in place the kinds of processes that will allow you to know whether, in fact, you've made a difference.At the same time, if you're too linear, if you're driven by metrics only, and driven only by a kind of a stripped business-speak type process, that doesn't give you the emotional sense. So I don't view them at all as competitive or mutually exclusive. I think they reinforce each other.And it isn't even a matter of people resisting being more process-oriented; it's just that they don't know how to do that. Once they've learned, I think it becomes a richer and better experience for the donor. Which is important. But even more important, a richer and better experience for the recipient, for the community of interest that you're trying to help.Sean: Can you tell us a little bit about a particular family that you've worked with, anonymously or otherwise, that kind of demonstrates this transformational process that you helped walk them through?Peter: I think a family that we have worked with, and in fact, it's described in the book -- it's something they're willing to be public about -- has been the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation. Mr. Fireman is the founder of Reebok, and he and his wife and son and daughters decided that they wanted to try to work with homeless people, in some way, and help homeless families in particular. They had this idea that they would bring two families enough money to get them into apartments, some furniture, household stuff, and the first rent and the deposit. That was their notion.What happened when the Firemans broached this idea to several focus groups of women who were homeless and were living in shelters is that, universally, they pushed back on the idea. They said, "That really doesn't help us. I mean, it's great, thank you very much. We'd love to be in an apartment, but the bottom line is, if I haven't got a job that supports my family, I'll be back out on the street in six months. And that would be worse, almost. What we really need is a way to earn a living."That led to an exploration of what kind of educational needs, job training, and micro-credit opportunities might exist for these folks. Out of that came a remarkably ambitious effort, in Massachusetts, to end family homelessness in five years. It's a program that's in its third year, that's actually on track.I think it was that kind of deep listening -- that kind of learning -- that enabled, in this case, one family foundation to become far more ambitious, far more thoughtful, and far more systemic. We have seen that kind of experience over and over again.Sean: That family, as you said, appears in the book, "The World We Want." Tell me about the book. I've read it, it's a wonderful book with a number of great stories. How did it come about, and what are you hoping that readers take from it?Peter: We're all on a journey, and the book, I guess for me, is where I am on my journey. It sort of evolved out of this interesting experience I've had of meeting so many people who have a vision for the world that's a better world, but -- more than a vision -- actually are doing something about it and having ideas about how it might work.Thus, the book consists of, partly, my own journey, in terms of life and of community, but more importantly, these stories of some remarkable people who have, in fact, figured out how to put their shoulder to the stone and move on the issue of making the world better.It's not purely a visioning exercise, nor is it something that is just a Pollyanna look at things. There was a real attempt to look at the challenges, to look at the dark side, and to look at what could really make a difference. A goal for the book is that those who read it will find, not only useful analogs to what they may want to do, but that it will inspire them to do more. To, in fact, awaken the citizen within. That is my goal.The book came out in February, but in reality, the media launch will not occur until the fall. There will be a book tour and a tie-in with National Public Radio, and a bunch of what a friend of mine calls the "30 seconds of fame" kind of thing.Sean: Right. Wonderful!Peter: So, we'll see what happens. There is an audience for this book that is out of those who are already within the tent, or in the church basement and care about these things. That audience is great, but what I'm hoping is that, somehow, one can reach the broader audience of people who may really be holding back, for whatever reason, and might find inspiration to step up to the plate and be counted.Sean: For my listeners, that last piece is exactly what I found so exciting about the book. It's, at the same time, incredibly engaging, but also very, very accessible. Professionals in the philanthropic sector will find it to be a very inspiring book, but people completely new to the world of giving are going to find that it is something that they can read cover to cover, and don't have to do a ton of research to get through. It's really a wonderful book full of stories.Peter: Well, thank you. [laughs] I'm glad you liked it.Sean: [laughs] My next question, Peter, is a little engaged, and I ask you to bear with me: I want to weave together a couple of strands of thought from different places, and ask you where you think the future of philanthropy is going.In your book, fellow philanthropy blogger Lucy Bernholz -- who blogs at Philanthropy 2173 -- says, "Imagine if philanthropy focused on helping communities co-create solutions and work together." In one of the first posts on my blog, TacticalPhilanthropy.com, I wrote, "The new philanthropists will be smaller, widely distributed agents of change who co-create the social sector that they support."I'm struck by this repetition of the word "co-create," and in the first chapter of your book, you say that "Just Money" -- the book that you edited -- was about the role of large foundations, but that The World We Want is about a much broader philanthropic community. Could you talk a little bit about where you see the future of philanthropy unfolding, and why you think this broader philanthropic landscape is of such interest right now?Peter: Well, it's interesting, because the words that you used in your own writing and the way that Lucy in her wonderfully articulate manner put out her notion of "open source philanthropy." The fascinating thing is that this is not really new. This is happening and has been happening, and that is why the rhetoric -- when people write things, as Lucy has done -- resonates so much.It's actually happening as we speak. The book itself has examples of that. It's philanthropy not from the donor perspective only. The book has a story from Shirley Strong -- who has been, for 15 years, running a project called Project Change, that was funded by Levi Strauss that has worked on racism in 13 communities around the country -- who talks about how one builds a community of interest that grows one's soul, and using it in a manner that is co-created with the participants.Another story is about Henry Izumizaki, who is a legendary street worker in the San Francisco area for 30 years, and how he has been able to work in the poorest of communities and help those people discover their own power to, in fact, better their lives in exactly that kind of collaborative way.There's another story of a man named Chad Wick, who runs the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in Ohio, that is very large and that works on school reform, who talks about the need for the people who do this work -- the teachers -- to be on fire to do this work and connect with their communities. The whole theme, within my own experience, of how listening and going to the ground and being part of the very voices that you hear is absolutely essential.In the book, Peggy Dulany -- the founder of Synergos and David Rockefeller's eldest daughter -- talks about when she went to a little village in Brazil as a teenager and realized immediately, without knowing anything, that the people there who had nothing knew what they needed to make their lives better. It was going to need to come out of them, it was never going to come down from the top.The notion of co-creation... Which begins to sound a little theological, actually, Sean, but that's not where I'm going with this...Sean: [laughs]Peter: But the notion of really doing this as a party with multiple players is fascinating. The other thing that's happening is that philanthropy, in the narrow sense of foundations and donors, has lived in a silo. That silo is now where walls are being blurred, and the market economy is entering this space in a whole variety of ways.The book has stories about two of the, let's say, poster children of this way of thinking -- Pierre Omidyar, from eBay, and Steve Case, who founded AOL -- both of whom are trying to use their monies to engage in social change and resolve social dilemmas from a for-profit, as well as a non-profit, perspective.You have these immense themes that are really moving us in a sea change that is extremely interesting and exciting. It does open up, in a far more democratic way, the ability of people from all kind of domains to enter the space of being citizens and taking up the notion of citizen action and social action.Sean: Peter, thank you for sharing your views with us. In addition to being a philanthropic leader, you are also a published poet. Some of your poetry appears in "The World We Want." Would you mind ending the interview by reading one of the poems from your book for us?Peter: Well, that's a gift to any poet, so, thank you.Sean: [laughs]Peter: I'd be happy to do that. The poem I'd like to read is called "Conscience," which actually opens the book. It has an epigraph by Stanley Kunitz, the poet, which is, "...caught in the dangerous traffic between self and universe." This is the poem, "Conscience:"I carve out a small space, a nestOf sorts and lie my conscience down to rest.As a gift it bears little resemblance toThe madness around me, those who thinkThey know everything, those who despair.My own absurd, hesitant presumption is hope.I watch the Osprey hunt the harbor at dusk,It soars and glides to a frantic wing-beatAnd like an acrobat hangs in mid-airAs flashes of silver scales belowSignal time to make a precision dive.My own hesitant presumption is hope.As an infant flails, wails, loss of womb,Its wet, loud, pronouncement -- I am here!My conscience, not newborn, nor single-Minded like the Fish Hawk, hears the cryOf the wounded heart.My own presumption is hope.Even as deadly fog shrouds the backstageIt is no match, these awakenings are legion,New dimensions of spirit and soulRise from sweet hearth and beloved earth,Feminine and divine.My own hopeLies in Mahler's 1st, from minor to major,From darkness to Frere Jacques. So rise,Tired traveler, renew, seek secret places,The great percussion of possibilities within.Sean: Thank you so much, Peter. That was beautiful.This has been the Tactical Philanthropy podcast. You can visit us at TacticalPhilanthropy.com. For more information about Peter Karoff, visit TPI.org. Thank you so much for listening. ]]> http://blip.tv/file/587360 Default Category Fri, 13 Apr 2007 04:00:00 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Peter Karoff Interview http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ C18BE8A8-BE48-11DC-8ECC-BE608578345B http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/susan-raymond-interview-593051 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593051 587352 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-03-30T04:00:00Z English 0 0 0 1084 AaSZfwI http://blip.tv/play/AaSZfwI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593051&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Sean Stannard-Stockton: Hello, and welcome to the "Tactical Philanthropy" Podcast. I'm Sean Stannard-Stockton author of the Tactical Philanthropy Blog and Principal and Director of Tactical Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital.My guest today is Susan Raymond. Susan is Senior Managing Director of Research, Evaluation and Strategic Planning for Changing Our World. A leading consulting firm helping nonprofits, private and corporate philanthropists achieve their goals. She's also chief analyst for onphilanthropy.com, a global resource for nonprofit professionals.Susan is the author of the book "The Future of Philanthropy", as well as the soon to be released "Mapping the New World of American Philanthropy", of which I am a contributing author.Susan, thank you so much for joining me today.Susan Raymond: Happy to be here, Sean.Sean: Well, why don't you start off and tell us a little bit about how you came to work in the world of philanthropy.Susan: Well, I'm a little bit of a fish out of water in this particular area. I'm an economist by training, doctorate in economics and public health from Hopkins, and a former World Bank lending officer as well as a senior consultant to the US Agency for International Development in overseas development.I really knew absolutely nothing about philanthropy until I was put in charge of managing U.S. resources for human capital development in Eastern Europe and the Soviet System as those countries fell with the fall of the Berlin Wall.We actually had a very conscious effort at that point in time to try to establish institutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet nations, which would provide opportunities for emerging private leadership to become engaged in their communities. Because we knew that those economies were going to go south before they went north. And, as they went south, we did not want the people to hark back to the Supreme Soviet as the good-old-days and feel that the new and emerging economic growth was taking advantage of the community.So, we created a set of programs to establish foundations and nonprofits in these newly free civil societies. And in the process of doing that, I became very interested in the role of philanthropy in civil society and in the strengthening of local communities overseas. And one thing leads to another and that's how I made a shift from looking at economic development as a purely economic phenomenon, an investment and trade phenomenon, to a phenomenon that is grounded in strong civil society.Sean: And so how did you then move into a professional career in philanthropy?Susan: As most things in my life, by chance. I wish I could say I had a grand plan which I'm in the process of implementing. But I don't.I've brought a number of people who were in the philanthropic sector and in the nonprofit sector out with me, to represent the American view to my counterparts in Eastern European Nations. One of the individuals was Mike Hoffman who at that point was the head of external affairs for the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor Foundation and he then formed a new firm to focus on philanthropy and fundraising which became Changing Our World.In the early days he asked me if I would join up with him and be the director of research in that firm. Neither of us knew what that meant. I was at that point the head of strategic planning at the New York Academy of Sciences and had convened, as far as I was concerned, the last conference that I ever wanted to convene. I was looking for new opportunities, and neither of us knew exactly what we were doing, but that's how I got involved with it professionally.And when I got involved, when I began to get involved in this sector, which was something on the order of eight years ago, the fact was there very few people writing anything analytically about this sector. It was very much, at that point, a terra incognita, if you will. There was very little critical work, almost no quantitative work, very little analytical work.So we began onphilanthropy.com to write what were in effect op-ed pieces, but very quantitatively grounded op-ed pieces on issues in philanthropy and nonprofit. And it just so happened that there was something of a vacuum at that point in time for that kind of material and so that's how I began to get involved in the analytic side of the sector.Sean: OK.Susan: That was in the Pliocene Age.Sean: OK, sure, sure.[laughter]Susan: Much before all the talk about the transfer of wealth. It was me and the dinosaurs on the landscape at that point.Sean: Why don't you tell me about your new book, "Mapping the New World of Philanthropy"? I have an essay in the book but I haven't read the other essays. Tell me about the vision behind the book.Susan: Well, I think the vision behind the book could be summarized in a single sentence: The transfer of wealth is not about the money. When people in philanthropy have talked about the upcoming transfer of wealth, they've talked about it in terms of what is unique here is the number of zeros that are involved.The vision behind the book is that it's not about the number of zeros that are involved. It's about fundamental changes in the social and economic landscape that have enabled, or have encouraged, wealth to find its way to the social commons.It is about the emergence of different ways and skills and mechanisms for finance to be involved on the social commons. And it is about the likely backlash on the regulatory and public expectation side of that transfer of resources, which if disappointed will erode public trust of philanthropy and nonprofits.So, what we have here is a new world that is a new World. The analogy I use is tectonic plates. You have a series of pressures, just like the tectonic plates that are below the earth's crust. And as those plates push against one another you have both change in topography and you have crises and disasters like earthquakes.You have tectonic plates underneath society as well. And those are demographic, those are economics, those are societal, those are political. And as those tectonic plates push against one another, they have given rise to a new topography, a new world on which philanthropy rests or which effects philanthropy.What the book does is look not so much at philanthropy initially, but really at the pressures that those tectonic plates underneath the surface of society that are giving rise to both opportunity for philanthropy and potentially to significant problems for philanthropy.Sean: That is really a great analogy. I really appreciate the distinction of what is going on in philanthropy as being really a cultural shift rather then just a money transfer.We were speaking to Charles Collier from Harvard University in the last edition of this podcast. He called the dollar amount over hyped. On the Tactical Philanthropy blog, I say that I'm chronicling the second great wave of philanthropy. But I agree with you completely it is not about a new shift in dollars, although certainly those are helpful, it is more about cultural shifts going on.Susan: We have one of the essays in the book is called "Listening to the Critics". Someone has just asked me to write something and the theme of what I'm going to write is how important it is to be critical, not to believe your own PR.We have to understand that. The changes that are taking place in these tectonic pressures are also changes about how people look at themselves and what people consider to be adequate compared to what Andrew Carnegie considered to be adequate.It's no longer adequate to have two cars you have to have three. It's no longer adequate to have one house you have to have two. And so the "money", if all we're going to do is look at money then we're also going to have to realize that it is true that the total number is likely not to be as high as people say because the economic carrying cost of exceptions are much higher then they were.What we really have to make sure is that the ethics, the underlying ethics of philanthropy, the underlying ethics of volunteerism, is strengthened in this country and really quite frankly strengthened globally quite apart from how much money we are talking about.Sean: Absolutely. I'm going to move on a little bit here. In September of last year in an essay published to onphilanthropy.com you wrote, "The emergence of Google.org as a for profit philanthropy and as comparable organization such as Whole Foods may be bringing us to the end of definitions in the philanthropic and nonprofit world."What did you mean by the phrase "the end of definitions"?Susan: Well I sort of took that from Francis Fukuyama's work on the end of history, as you may recall that at the conclusion of a lot of the transition from the cold war. Fukuyama wrote a piece called "The End of History" and it was widely largely misunderstood. He was not arguing that we were at the end of events, what he was arguing was that we were at the end of Hegelian structures of history.Where history moves, a historian could look at the tyrannical moving to the democratic, the lesser moving to the greater, and the smaller moving to the larger. But in fact it was acknowledge that represented governments, however that is politically organized, is the desired means of governments. And what now we were going to have was a proliferation of type of adaptation representative government to culture, to religion, to natural history, and there would be no progression any longer.We were going to have cope with diversity. History was going to have to be written about diversity, not about sequencing. And when you look at what is happening in philanthropy what we have is an end of definitions. We don't have simple not for profit, and simple philanthropy. We don't have philanthropy as charity. We don't have nonprofits, who by definition, are not making money. Nonprofit does not even mean not making money. If you look at the structure of nonprofit finance, you find that for all but the smallest none profits the philanthropic dollar, the donated dollar, the volunteering dollar, is in fact the smallest dollar in the revenue stream for those institutes.And so we have a new and emerging dynamic on the social commons in which elements of the social commons are in fact becoming markets. And we don't have a distinction between nonprofit behavior and market behavior. We have blending of nonprofit behavior and market behavior.And what we have to do now is begin to think differently, if you will, the business we are in from a philanthropic and nonprofit point of view. And understand the emerging role of that business on a changing social commons.Sean: So tell me why you think, I assume you think, that this is a positive development. In December you were quoted in the "New York Times Magazine" in a story called "For Profit Philanthropy".There is another philanthropy blogger, Phil Cubeta, who writes a site called Gift Hub, who recently called the micro finance movement, micro loan sharking. I think you see kind of a sheet of resistance in some areas of people saying this is not a good thing. The idea that Google's foundation would be a for profit entity is not a positive development. How would you answer that?Susan: I would not say that I think that all innovations, all variations on the social commons are "good" developments in the sense of being value maximizing. I think that is part of what we have in the book talking about the reaction to the new approaches: the regulatory reactions, the legal reactions, and the public expectation reaction.I think that we are in a very murky business right now. I think that we do not have a good handle on what constitutes value in these new approaches. If it is true for instance, which it appears to be, that in many, many cases the value of uncompensated care provided by nonprofit hospitals is less than the value of uncompensated care provided by the for profit hospital, and is less than the value of the tax break that nonprofit hospitals get. I think it is a valid question to ask whether healthcare that doesn't pay taxes provides value to the taxpayer who bears the alternative burden.I think that some of this work is beginning to be done, and I think it's going to be done with much greater care, now that these variations are taking place. "Advertising Age" yesterday had a big headline article on the Red Campaign. Basically saying that the Red Campaign net of all of the fees that everyone was taking was in fact not transferring $100 million to the global funds for HIV, AID, Malaria, and Tuberculosis, it was transferring $18 million.And so I think that all of these innovations, these variations are to be expected because we have a lot of innovation and variation in finance itself. But I think that they need to be looked at very critical in terms of their value that the product on the social commons relative to the costs of the invocations.Sean: That all sounds great. Tell me, before we go, if my listeners want to get a copy of your book where can they purchase it?Susan: It is being published by Wiley and they can find it on the Wiley website. And once it is published they an also find it on the onphilanthropy.com website.[Editor's note: It can also be pre-ordered on Amazon.com]Sean: That's great.Well this has been the "Tactical Philanthropy" podcast. You can visit us at tacticalphilanthropy.com. And for more info on Susan Raymond visit changingourworld.com.Thank you so much for listening. ]]> http://blip.tv/file/587352 Default Category Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:00:00 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Susan Raymond Interview http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 821029C2-BE49-11DC-889F-FB2F0EB52004 http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast/charles-collier-interview-593062 seans 69685 tacticalgiving sean-ss-podcast Sean SS Podcast http://blip.tv/sean-ss-podcast http://blip.tv/skin/blipnew/placeholder_user.gif 593062 587363 file TV-UN 0.0 2007-03-09T05:00:00Z English 0 0 0 1016 AaSaCgI http://blip.tv/play/AaSaCgI http://blip.tv/comments/?attached_to=post593062&skin=rss test-pattern-with-play-button.png Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Sean Stannard-Stockton: Hello. Welcome to the Tactical Philanthropy podcast. I'm Sean Stannard-Stockton, author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog and principal and director of Philanthropy at Ensemble Capital. My guest today is Charles Collier. Charlie is the senior philanthropic advisor at Harvard University. He has also held positions at Princeton, Brown, Andover and Dartmouth. He has worked with hundreds of individuals to help them shape their philanthropy, make tax wise gift decisions and deal with family issues surrounding financial wealth. The second edition of his book, Wealth and Families was recently released and is available at Amazon.com.So Charlie, thanks so much for being here.Charles Collier: Thank you.Sean: Why don't you start off and tell us a little bit about how you came to work as a philanthropic advisor.Charles: Well most of my career, and continuing a bit today, has been around charitable tax planning. I've been, if you will, a senior philanthropic advisor around the tax aspects. About ten years ago, a number of my high net worth clients wanted help in their family philanthropy broadly, as well as navigating their family relationships around money and inheritances.So I decided to move into that area as a complementary one to the tax planning and provide a different and what I've found to be an important adjunct service to individuals and their families.Sean: In your book Wealth and Families, you stress the importance of asking "why" questions, as in, "Why is the family engaging in philanthropy in the first place?" Why do you think it's so important to ask these types of questions?Charles: Well I think that the families of both generations, both the parents who are typically the wealth creators, and then the children who are beneficiaries of that wealth, I often have conversations about how they think about the money or the philanthropy. So what it does, if I can get a parent to talk about what are the purposes for them of this money, how do they think about the responsibility around the money, how do they and why do they think about philanthropy as an important core competency of the family and their children, that often reduces the anxiety both the parents have and that the children have.The children rarely hear from their parents how they think about it, why they want to do it for themselves, why they think it's important to pass on or attempt to pass on this impulse to the next generation. By the same token, I'm a fan of actually having the children in front of the parents saying what they think about what the uses of the money are. What they think, how they would craft a shared dream for their generation's philanthropy, and what kind of institutions, causes and organizations they might want to give to based on their own interest.For me, the conversation around these why questions is very important to help families respect the differences in the two generations and facilitate a broader discussion.Sean: You used the word anxiety. What do you think is the anxiety that families face around philanthropy?Charles: I think the anxiety around philanthropy and indeed around money is that money in the family and philanthropy in the family are both difficult subjects to talk about and they are anxious subjects. For me, they are anxious subjects because the money has taken on a life of it's own in the family and as far as the philanthropy goes, the parents are not sure if they want to let go and let the children make their own decisions or at least using some discretionary grant making now during their lifetime but also making decisions after they are gone in a foundation or advice fund or the like.It's hard for parents because their children are different. And if they include their in-laws, their children's spouses, their son and daughter in law, they too are different and they are going to have a different experience coming in to this family of money.For me, the anxiety is driven to a large extent by the transition of parents being willing to accept their children and their son and daughter in law as different from them and they are going to have different agendas for their philanthropy long term.Sean: So far you've brought up some of the issues or the problems that people might have when they go through this process. But what comes out of engaging in philanthropy as a family that's so positive rather than each of the family members engaging in their own philanthropy?Charles: I think, like many others that the philanthropic family has two purposes. One is the public purpose of social value of improving aligned with hopefully well placed giving. On the other hand there's also the private values of the family. I think families tend to both. Two among other values for the family, a multi-generational family, say two generations to begin to work together. Again, this is really hard to do.Yet working with a philanthropic fund or foundation gives families hopefully a safe environment in which to work together and make decisions and solve joint problems because the money has already been given away. It is the public's money if they're using a foundation or donor advised fund. So it can become a positive way of working together and dealing with an often toxic subject.It also, of course, for the family provides core competencies that carry over into the rest of life, such as working together, learning about money and investments, learning about due diligence, learning about the community, learning about what it means to be strategic, and thinking about effectiveness in one's giving. So these are important in my view, important skills and competencies that carry over to other parts of the children's lives.Sean: I definitely see a lot of parents of young children who see philanthropy as one way to talk to their children about their values and their beliefs. I think a lot of them see it as an opportunity to kind of instill, if not their own values, instill as sense of value, a sense of philanthropic interest in their children. Just practically, what's the best way to do that? Specifically with younger children, if a family is bringing children say around ten or twelve or fourteen into this discussion. What's the best way for them to engage the children?Charles: Well, I like to say that on balance all families ought to, but especially wealthy families should insist on having an allowance for their children by age eight and also helping their children begin to do some philanthropy. Even younger than age eight they can take... parents can volunteer and take their children to the Thanksgiving Day soup kitchen for example, which then sends the message, without being explicit about it, that we are a family that care about others beyond the family.When it comes to philanthropy, especially with 10, 12, and 14-year-olds, you can get them actively involved by saying, "Here's some money." The amount of money doesn't matter, whether it's $100 or $1,000, that we are giving to you to give away to causes you care about. As well as we want to work together on giving $3,000 to causes we might jointly decide on. So in an informal way they can, even as young teenagers, bring them along and give them access to some, as I call it of course, discretionary grant making even for a family without a foundation.Later teenage years often people will have a junior board, if indeed they have a board for their foundation. The children are going to come onto that at the age of 18 or 21 or 25. So it can be as formal as a junior board or as informal as, "Here's some money this holiday season that you can give away to causes that you care about." I think the implicit message of this work, of course, is that there is an important value and there is a responsibility if you're going to inherit money of consequence that that comes with some responsibility to share some of that to improve humankind.Sean: Great. Let's shift subjects a little bit. You are a philanthropic advisor who works for Harvard University. Why does Harvard, or why in your opinion should nonprofits in general be providing philanthropic services to donors?Charles: Well in my case I discovered that this has been useful because a subset of my donors and clients who were wealthy have been asking me for this service. They've organically started conversations around family philanthropy and the dynamics therein. So I began providing this service and it has been immensely useful to me and my institution by helping them do what they wanted to include, obviously some transactions, gift transactions, but giving money in order to give it away or giving money to other causes they care about.It may seem counterintuitive, but my helping them do what they want to do as well as the Harvard intersection... They can know who to turn to out in society for this service. There is a small cottage industry of course, but most of their financial advisors do not provide a deep engagement around these issues.I do think that some larger nonprofits or other universities or colleges could have someone dedicate some time to this. But it's probably only a few to a certain extent in America because it does take a critical mass of staff so that someone's time. We'd all call it cross-training, learning how to deal with it as about money.Sean: Sure, that makes sense. When we were talking a couple of weeks ago, you said that the great wealth transfer, the $41 trillion that Paul Schervish at Boston College says will be inherited over the next 50 years, is "over hyped". That was your word. What makes you say that?Charles: Well, the research is important, and the numbers are changing. Actually, writing and speaking on this is very valuable and I have high respect for him and his work. However, I tend to focus on the high-end wealth holders and people with high net worth. Those are the people whose children are going to be wealthy because obviously there's a peaking of a very small number of maybe half a million people who have... half a million households in America that have substantial financial wealth.It's those heirs, children and grandchildren who are going to be the beneficiary of most of the money, at least located in their own family line. So I'm more interested in working with and focusing on that group of wealthy than the broader picture, although the money that Paul and others have discerned will come down is clearly substantial.Sean: Sure. OK. Well, I have one last question. It's from a reader of my blog, and the question is what are some specific ways that a family can use philanthropy to educate their kids about broader wealth issues? How do you make that leap from the philanthropic conversation into teaching their kids about, say, money or taxes or due diligence as you mentioned?Charles: Right. Well, the best way I can answer that is to give you an example. I do work with a successful family business owner who from time to time brings in some of his children who prove themselves, or their son-in-law, daughter-in-law, who want to work in the family business in the Midwest. As they come in, having gone to college and then gone out and proven themselves then come back into the family business, he says as they come back in in their mid to late 20s, he insists that they have at least a two-year or three-year duty on the board of the family foundation.I said, "Well, that's intriguing. Why do you insist on that?" He said, "Because in the foundation work they learn all the kinds of skills and competencies I want them to have in the business part of it. Because they learn how they'll work together as a team. They learn how to make right decisions. They learn how to solve problems. They have to know something about investments and learn about the investments, the financial investments of the foundation. They have to do due diligence and make decisions about grant making. They have to go into the community and meet people who are different from them and yet be doing important work in the community. All of these things and more are traits and characteristics I want to enhance in their lives, which will carry over exactly to our business plan and model as well."So philanthropy is an opening to broader enrichment in broader skills. Also, in many families it's a way in to talk about the meaning and purpose of the rest of the wealth in the family. How much should we leave to the foundation that you all, the children, are having such a good time? How much do we leave to future heirs? How do we make an appropriate and effective ultimate estate allocation vis a vis the work that the family has started in on the philanthropy?Sean: Well Charlie, thank you so much for joining us today.Charles: You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me.Sean: This has been the Tactical Philanthropy podcast. You can visit us at tacticalphilanthropy.com. You can find Charlie's book "Wealth and Families" at Amazon.com. Thank you so much for listening. ]]> http://blip.tv/file/587363 Default Category Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:00:00 +0000 http://a.images.blip.tv/test-pattern-with-play-button.png ]]> Charles Collier Interview http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/