Taking a Family Foundation from Growing Pains to Enhanced Effectiveness and Impact

Situation

A family foundation invested its corpus wisely and each year they had more money to deploy in their philanthropic efforts. While this sounds like a great problem to have, the foundation had not engaged any professional management and was relying instead on family members’ ability to wear multiple hats. As a result, the business of running the foundation was threatening the very joy the family received from giving. To ensure that didn’t happen, the foundation engaged Quinn Strategy Group to help them develop an immediate strategy to evolve their board composition, size and structure.

Action

We facilitated a series of conversations with the board to explore the internal workings of the foundation, family dynamics, as well as external environmental shifts that were impacting the foundation’s work. These discussions allowed the family to gain new clarity on the mission of the foundation, its grant-making parameters and what they wanted in terms of family involvement. Once we established the foundation’s larger purpose and specific goals, we identified the exact skills, experience, attributes and personalities that would be needed to achieve that desired vision.

Impact

The entire process helped re-invigorate the family and rally them around the reason they established the foundation in the first place. We helped each family member align their contribution with their true interests and strengths and also developed ideas to streamline the grant-making process – which can truly be a killjoy! This work provided a profile for future board members who could help advance the foundation’s mission in significant ways.
Asking foundations the “why” question can spark the most interesting, meaningful and important conversations. It is the “why” that reveals the values, vision and reason for giving.
Ann Quinn
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