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| Building Your Family's 100 Year Plan: The Series |
100 Year Plan Part III: Give, and We Shall Receive
Brett Anderson
02/02/2004
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In our 100-year family plans, philanthropy often furnishes a sense of community, particularly at points when businesses or merely geographic proximity no longer perform this vital function. The defining common values by which we identify ourselves as a family, and which shape our family mission, find their most meaningful expression in our charitable endeavors. And these endeavors, in turn, by exercising our values—by putting them into action—keep them vibrant, alive and evolving from one generation to the next.
"[People] ask themselves how they
can draw their family together in a common purpose," observes Karen Putnam, principal and director of Philanthropic Advisory Services at Bessemer Trust, "and they see philanthropy—this notion of giving back—as a kind of canopy that arches over all of the different individual interests under which the members of the family gather."
In addition to strengthening our families’ identities, philanthropy develops skills that contribute to the preservation of our wealth, values and missions. A family foundation operates in much the same manner as a business, and its board members, though giving rather than earning, assume the same responsibilities: They must understand the community (or market) they serve; they must consider both short- and long-term consequences of given strategies; and they must develop budgets, measure returns on their investments, and account for their decisions to the other board members, as well as to the rest of the family.
"It may seem counterintuitive," says Putnam, "but the thoughtful giving away of money requires a lot of the same skills as the thoughtful making of money. The skills are valuable however you accrue them. So in that sense, if the individual who generates the wealth wants to perpetuate those values that made him or her successful, philanthropy may be a good place to look."
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