Family philanthropy: Deciding when to hire senior support staff
Philanthropic giving is highly personal, and most families choose to remain close to the decision-making around this work. While families often consult philanthropic advisors as part of their philanthropic journey, the question can arise in a busy family office about when it makes sense to hire philanthropic support staff.
Philanthropic giving is highly personal, and most families choose to remain close to the decision-making around this work. While families often consult philanthropic advisors as part of their philanthropic journey, the question can arise in a busy family office about when it makes sense to hire philanthropic support staff.
With deep passion for the missions they support, families typically prefer to be involved in their philanthropic efforts. They build strong relationships with aligned grantee partners, and a family member might serve as a trustee. Family office leadership can be well-equipped to support the follow-through on grants, such as a cadence of gift awards and checkwriting, and even grants management.
Philanthropy advisors can be great partners during a family’s philanthropy journey. They can help family members: clarify areas of common interest; develop key criteria for selecting grantee partners; conduct and synthesize due diligence and landscape analysis across fields of interest; and create frameworks that “balance” a philanthropic portfolio across many giving areas. Some advisors even connect their clients to potential grantee partners or other families who might have shared interests and goals, to support learning and create greater impact (as evidenced by collective funds and initiatives).
One of the big questions that often emerges in a busy family office is when the time is right to hire staff to support your philanthropy work. The answer usually falls into two primary areas:
- When there’s a substantive strategic or programmatic question that you need to answer or are eager to explore in depth
- When different and complementary skills are required
In this case, a staff member could handle all of the work of a philanthropy advisor by supporting your strategic decision-making with landscape analysis and/or designing a programmatic approach that aligns with your intent. Additionally, a staff member can translate your ideas into reality by developing program strategies and implementation plans, both of which could require multiyear focus.
One family was simultaneously looking to sharpen its philanthropy approach and had identified an interest in a specific sub-field in education. To help focus their efforts, their philanthropy advisor facilitated a process that allowed family members to coalesce around supporting fewer, deeper grantee partnerships. This also meant that family members found themselves needing to communicate a sensitive message of transition to several organizations, given that their support would be gradually diminishing over a few years’ time.
Creating a multilayer learning journey
Having a program leader on staff offered several benefits. They were an active resource to those organizations as they were gradually off-ramped, which was aligned to the family’s values; this leader was able to build and share connections with other funders on behalf of the former grantees. In parallel, the leader designed a multiyear learning journey for the family in its newly chosen area of programmatic focus. They attended national and regional conferences and made connections with both grantees and other funders in the space. This led to a series of learning sessions with external experts that the family valued and that allowed them to articulate a multiyear strategy that included some early pilot grants.
In another example, one client was particularly interested in youth homelessness. Their philanthropic advisor conducted research focused geographically, which revealed that there were a few organizations operating across multiple cities and seeking to scale their promising approaches. It became clear to the principal that supporting one of those organizations as it sought to replicate its model could be both rewarding and offer a unique path to social impact. However, it also meant a significant time investment that neither the principal nor the philanthropy advisor could take on. They hired a leader who could quickly understand the programmatic content and become immersed in the field. As an added bonus, the leader had prior knowledge and experience in nonprofit advisory work and was able to be of particular help to the grantee as it was scaling its model.
For a family office that was supporting three generations of family members as they refined their philanthropy approach, it was important to identify a staff member who brought strong facilitation and listening skills. The leader they selected had acquired broad-based programmatic knowledge. Despite identifying themselves as a generalist, the leader was familiar with one of the family’s four areas of long-standing program interests and expressed excitement about the opportunity to learn about new program areas.
More critically in this situation, the leader—having been a nonprofit Executive Director previously—brought experience facilitating strategic planning processes that engaged multiple stakeholders with diverse perspectives and goals. The leader also had previously raised funds and developed deep connections with several family foundations that had navigated generational shifts. This meant that the leader had supported, and advanced, projects where there were competing interests that needed to be navigated and negotiated. In addition, their prior experience included supporting a nonprofit’s board of directors as it clarified its governance and decision-making processes.
A content focused model
A different model would be to identify a leader with content expertise. As an example, a family office team sought to recruit a content-focused leader, as they were in the process of concentrating nearly all of their philanthropic giving into one program area that they cared about the most. This approach of seeking to amplify one focus area proved to be rewarding on a few levels. They recruited a leader who was well-known and respected in that field, which allowed for easy and quick connections with grantees and other philanthropic partners. This also allowed the family to leverage the leader’s understanding of attempted approaches in the field that hadn’t succeeded. Through a deep dive in research to understand what was possible, the leader and family were quite surprised to find that one of these approaches could be revisited. This time it was successful, as grantee partners with complementary skills came together in a tightly focused way that benefited each of their organization’s goals.
One caution on recruiting a content expert is that it is crucial to take the time during the recruiting process to ensure alignment on programmatic vision as well as clarity about the family’s vs. the leader’s role in strategic decision-making. Disagreements can occur when a staff leader seeks to enable their personal vision versus bringing to life the family’s vision. We often urge families to imagine what the ideal partnership looks like, especially as it relates to decisions regarding strategy and direction. A strong recruitment process can “test” this in action.
Whichever set of skills, experiences or program knowledge is chosen, it will be critical to identify a philanthropy-focused colleague who brings aligned values and leadership characteristics, which could include:
- A passion and genuine respect for the family’s philanthropic intent along with an orientation of being “in service to” the family’s vision
- An exceptional listener as well as a clear and thoughtful communicator able to process complex information and present ideas pragmatically
- Highly collaborative with an ability to build authentic relationships
- A strong facilitator who allows all to be heard
- Analytical and focused; a structured as well as creative problem-solver who is able to present options, and is comfortable iterating solutions
- An unflagging commitment to continuous improvement and learning, quality implementation and efficiency
- Judgment and discretion as well as personal and professional integrity
Another area of support that can arise is when there is a high volume of directed giving that a family might do. Some families intentionally staff this work when it overwhelms existing family office staff, while others work with outsourced partners to support some of this transaction-focused work.
Kathleen is the founder of Viewcrest Advisors, a boutique executive search firm serving family offices as well as foundations and nonprofit clients. She previously worked for The Bridgespan Group (originally incubated at Bain and Company) and Heidrick & Struggles.
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