Unlocking the Secrets of Effective Philanthropy.

0:01 Hello, Welcome everybody to another episode of Arthur's Round Table. We're super grateful for the family office insights community that's shared this and paid attention and and others. So thank you for doing that. We really appreciate it. We're not exactly high tech over here, so we haven't done all the CEO or LLM type stuff yet, but I think we'll get to that. But so far we've had a lot of views and really appreciate it. Hopefully we'll continue to share information with you. That's family office, family office adjacent. And as I like to say, I just, I'm at the crossroads of a lot of interesting people. So we just have others come on that is have nothing to do with family offices. So it's been a lot of fun.

0:41 So Danielle Patterson was a big shout out to her. She kindly introduced Chris to us today for this episode. And so we really appreciate that. Thanks, Danielle. So Chris, if you don't mind just starting at the beginning and sharing with the group how you'll all this began for you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Arthur for having me on the show. And also thank you to Danielle for introducing us. Yeah, my start in philanthropy really began out of Graduate School. I ended up working at Stanford University and I was evaluating youth and gang violence prevention programs throughout the state of California. And this initiative was funded entirely by 1 Foundation, the California Wellness Foundation. And they created this 10 year initiative to try to end youth violence and really were some of the early funders and believers in shifting the narrative from seeing youth violence, violence as a juvenile justice problem to a public health problem. And it permits something to be prevented. And so it really intrigued me about the power of philanthropy because as any donor, ultra high net worth family or foundation knows, you, you can have a lot of money, but that doesn't necessarily mean you do good with it or that you are effective in how you give your money away. And they approached it with, I think in many good ways. They brought in top talent and experts in the field of youth violence and violence prevention. They funded this.

2:08 They tackled the problem through a variety of different ways, by supporting young people in communities, in schools, helping young people get out of gangs, for example. But they also funded research on gun violence to increase the knowledge and awareness about the problem. They funded policy advocacy and shifting people's opinions and funding leaders and building the capacity of organizations to really tackle these issues. And they funded it for 10 years, which is a long time in philanthropy to fund anything and, you know, focus. So that was really intriguing. And I thought, wow, if you want to create social change, philanthropy might be a good venue. So I decided to go work at the David and Lucille Packard Foundation as my next job, which of course, as you know is the Family Foundation of Dave Packard of HP, which at the time, this is 1999, it was, I think the largest or one of the largest foundations in the country.

2:58 And I learned there that I, they really had a strategic approach to grant making and philanthropy. And I learned that I liked that. And I decided I wanted to go out on my own as a consultant. I began getting requests for consulting opportunities. And my first client was Charles and Helen Schwab's Family Foundation. So I did a lot of work with them over the years, and that was the middle of the.com boom in Silicon Valley, in San Francisco Bay Area. So a lot of people were making a lot of money and wanting to give it away. So that was the beginning of my consulting career in philanthropy. What can we just go back to the first organization? It's often interesting. Aside from the obvious funding of Schwab or Packard, we know where that money came from. Was this a public foundation or effort and funded by taxes or where did the money come from?

3:51 Yeah, it's a great question. It is a what's called a health conversion or a health legacy foundation. So it's a a private foundation, but it was funded through the sale of, there's many nonprofit hospitals, healthcare systems or health insurance companies that sold to for profit buyers and shifted from a nonprofit organization to a for profit organization. And in that sale, they were required by law to form a foundation to essentially give back to that community that had previously been served through that nonprofit healthcare system or health insurance company. So there are a lot of health conversion foundations across the country, especially as more and more nonprofit healthcare systems are getting gobbled up by larger for profit entities.

4:37 Yeah, it was at the time when you were doing that, that was really a lot of the consolidation was happening. In fact, United Healthcare was because they bought my first company that I sold and it was Franciscan Healthcare system, which was a non healthcare system. But it sounds like that requirement to fund these public benefit entities was much like what the community banks are required to do to get back on, right? Yeah, very similar, very similar. And it's important. I mean, when those organizations are formed, it's really important that they do have the community's best interest in mind and that they, you know, are thoughtful and how they identify what those community needs and ensure that local community voices are involved in the planning and implementation of those foundations.

5:29 Yeah. And I read a large part of your book, and so I have a pretty good idea of what the essence of the book is. And without revealing it, I'll let you tell all the folks what it is. But what I'm curious to know is when you were involved in that first nonprofit, first Foundation, were you able to actually have impact and demonstrate that you were? Because that's often the problem, right? You throw money at a problem, you don't really track the outcomes. No one's held accountable necessarily. And that's not malicious statements. I'm just there's a trend, right? So were you able to demonstrate the work you were doing had some impact? Well, yeah, because at the time I didn't actually work for the California Wellness Foundation.

6:11 We were funded by them through the Center for Research and Disease Prevention at Stanford University. So we were we were the evaluators of this initiative. So what they did, which I thought of course was effective, is they funded evaluation to to demonstrate is there and what's the impact, is there an impact and what we're having. And absolutely there was a lot of positive impact and what they did. But that also speaks to a really important point, which is, yes, it is important as a funder, as a donor, of course, you want to know that you're having an impact, but how do you know? And, and are you willing to support that nonprofit organization to evaluate the impact of what they're doing? Because that costs money. And a lot of times, you know, and you know, the title of my book is Delusional Altruism. And I wrote the book because, you know, I believe that everyone's trying to do the right thing. Donors want to make a difference. They want to be altruistic, genuinely help others change the world, but are delusional and how the fact that they're getting in their own way and they're preventing themselves from having the impact that they want to have. And part of that is a scarcity mindset. It's really the first chapter of the book and and it's really part of that scarcity mindset is not fully investing in the nonprofit's you're trying to support. And an example of that is not funding them to evaluate their impact.

7:29 So you want them to demonstrate to have an impact, but you're not willing to give them the money to help them make the case or to learn what's working and not working so that they can improve. And so that's one of the ways I see that donors. Counterintuitive, right? Well, yeah, I'm just. Going to say what I part of what I gathered in reading parts of your book was that Now wait a minute. If you want to have outcomes that you can measure, you have to run it like a business. And so you can't expect to have good outcomes and measure those outcomes unless you have the people, human resources, systems, infrastructure in order to make that happen like any good business does. Absolutely.

8:11 That's 100% correct. Because, yeah, especially you believe in a 'cause you want to end homelessness or increase access to mental health care, whatever it might be. You have a nonprofit organization you're supporting that's doing a great job. Well, don't you want them to have top talent, the best financial management systems, the ability to fundraise effectively, a fabulous board of directors, a clear strategic plan that they're implementing, all those things? Well, of course you do. All of those things cost money. And I think a lot of times donors and even the entrepreneurial ones who are so smart and how they made their money, sometimes they're smarts like it tossed out the window when it comes to their philanthropy because they forget the fact that, yeah, businesses have to invest in their in their talent and their retention and their upgraded computer and technology systems, whatever it might be. Well, so does a nonprofit.

9:03 They need to be as a in order to be effective as donors, you need to fund that. Right. Do you think that part of that mindset, scarcity mindset and fear, maybe it's fear, maybe it's not, is that there's been a lot of, I don't know, there was it, there's a company that rates nonprofits on how much they bring in and how much they deploy and it's sort of not very effective because it doesn't tell the whole story, right? So do you think part of it is that the entrepreneur that made all the money and set up the foundation is worried about not getting rated highly with some of these third party like a rating agency for example?

9:43 Yeah. And the one you might be thinking of is Charity Navigator. That's one which is a great organization and one worth looking at, charitynavigator.org, which when it started, it had kind of that financial focus of, you know, percent of overhead. If your overhead was too high, you were a bad nonprofit, things like that. They've since improved their ratings system, how they rate. But yeah, I don't know that. I don't know that donors are worried about that as much as they believe that, as much as that's been indoctrinated into our brains, you know, over time. I remember back when I was a kid watching commercials on television of, you know, helping children, organizations globally helping children and, you know, parts of Africa or wherever.

10:25 And the the message was always, you know, only one cent of your dollar donated goes to administration or overhead and $0.99 goes to helping the people. Well, that's a compelling message, but it isn't actually realistic, you know what I mean? And I don't know. How it could be right? Right. Exactly. Like how could you run a business with 1% of your revenue goes to, you know, pay your operations and your employees and whatnot. So I just think that that's like a misguided belief that honestly, it's sort of, it's part of the water that we drink. It's been drilled into our heads, and we just kind of viscerally believe that nonprofit organizations should run on a shoestring. And really, all that means is that you've got really stressed out, overworked, underpaid employee, you know, nonprofit employees.

11:11 Not proper talent. I mean, talent costs money, right? Exactly, exactly. And you know, a lot of these organizations, you give a grant for one year and then they have to prove their results and then six months later you might get them another grant. Meanwhile, what are they doing in those six months when they don't have the funding or they don't have the confidence that they can hire the top talent because they can't say with confidence we have three years of funding guaranteed for this particular initiative, Yeah. It's the world's a competitive place, right? So I did note that example in your book where not only is it not long enough to prove out your business case. Let me just talk about it that way. But you're also can't hire anybody because they don't know whether you're going to, you know, as a somebody, what is a career?

11:57 They could just go to Google or Facebook or somewhere and know that at least there's going to be longevity in their tenure of employment, right? Much as you altruistically want to be involved in a company that does good for the world, if you don't know you can feed your family and you know 13 months, what good is it, right? Exactly, exactly. And you know, no one's talking about sending their board of directors on their board retreat to The Four Seasons in Maui. We're just talking about giving them money to hire a facilitator to facilitate that retreat so that people can do their best thinking and have outcomes that they can then immediately begin to implement. So since you had your book come out, which has been what, three years like that, right?

12:42 Five years. Five years. Have you been able to convince people to look at this and change their lens and say, wait a minute, you probably need to fix the plumbing a little bit here? Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Through, you know, my consulting, you know, I have a lot of consulting engagements, advising engagements with my clients. One of them actually I can think of is a couple in Silicon Valley who started a Family Foundation by asking their advisor, help me start a Family Foundation. The advisors wealth advisor said sure, set it up and then they thought, now what do we do with this foundation? We actually have no idea just where I often come into the equation and you know, we talked, I always start with helping my clients think about, you know, what is it that you want to accomplish? What kind of impact do you want to have in your community in the world?

13:32 What kind of philanthropic family do you want to become? What issues and causes do you care about and really helping them kind of unpack that and identify that. And one of the things the wife said was, well, you know, I support organizations trying to help women, you know, kind of get out of poverty, get out of homelessness and be successful and self-sufficient, which is great. But she said something like, but I don't want to support buying computers. I want to support, you know, I don't want to support like fixing the if the roof is caving in the organization, I don't want my money to go to that. I want it to go to like helping the women get the training that they need. And I had and it really didn't take very long, but I just had to help her understand.

14:15 Chances are they the woman needs the computer in the, you know, the nonprofit that she's going to, to update her resume. She needs to be able to use the computer to look for jobs or to get the training that she needs or the training delivery. And if the roof is caving in on the nonprofit, they can't run the training program, right? So it really just was a matter of helping her see that there isn't anything wrong with supporting that nonprofit organization's capacity, organizational capacity to deliver the services it's trying to deliver. And it really was just a matter of explaining to it to her. And she just had an epiphany. She was like, I get it now. Of course I understand that she could. She could relate it to her family's business. She could relate it to remodeling your house, you know what I mean?

15:00 Like it's kind of the same thing. So I'm wondering without again being disparaging, was it the lens that she was looking through that was given to her as a result of other people that had foundations and her view on money that she didn't want to spend into those infrastructure things? Or was she just being not very bright about it and I don't mean to be put you in a position to call or not right, but what do you think it was? No, it's a, the smartest people have this belief and I think part of it is a, a fear of losing control. I think a lot of times when donors donate to an organization, they they want to track exactly where that money goes. And it's kind of a fear of like the money being misspent and wanting to and, and somehow a belief that, you know, if you're like directly helping the person, like giving them shoes because they have no shoes or housing because they have no housing, like that's more directly benefiting. And you can visualize that.

16:01 You can see it kind of just taping, taking that step back of trusting the nonprofit, delivering the services to say, hey, actually what we need to do is shift our model of how we're approaching this to a one that's more effective. And that's going to take some staff training, that's going to take some shifting of our practices and our systems. We need an investment for that so we can deliver better services. It just requires a little bit more trust, quite frankly, of that nonprofit, that organization's executive director, and there's their team to trust them that they, they have the best interest of these women or whoever it is at heart, and that they know the best way to deliver those services and they know the improvements that they need to make in their organization in order to be able to do that. So I think part of it is just like a trust issue. I think it's a fear.

16:47 You know, the 2nd chapter in my book is all about fear. I think it's a big problem in philanthropy. Fear of losing control of the nonprofit, fear of losing sight of who you are and what the person you thought you were and, you know, fear of wasting your money. But the the reality is I've yet to meet anyone, any nonprofit leader that has taken the grant and run off to the Bahamas with the money. Yeah, but there are those, right. Good for you to not happen to you. And it's look, I don't know what I'm talking about. So it seems to be that a lot of the nonsense that was going on in Minnesota and California, and I know you're in California, with the public stuff that was fraudulent, has caused people to be really hesitant to deploy capital because they fear that it's going to be circled back to some political campaign. But that doesn't seem realistic if it's your foundation, right? Well, certainly.

17:49 So if you it's your money, whether you're writing money, you know, writing, giving money away from your checkbook or out of a foundation or a donor advised fund or your family office is supporting this work. Really, I think it comes down to building and trusting relationships with the nonprofit's that you're trying to support, making sure you know who those people are, what they're doing. You know it's perfectly fine to request periodic updates and progress. One would too have. Conversations, you know, I think especially when you're getting a large sums of money away, you know, those nonprofits want to build a relationship with you, but it needs to be trusting. Like, honestly, they need to know that they can come to you and say it took us six months longer than we thought to hire the right person, therefore we're behind.

18:35 Can you give us an extension on our grant without fear that you're going to pull the plug and say, well, never mind, I'm not going to pay you, You know what I mean? Like, yeah, they're dealing with reality just like we're all dealing with reality and things are changing and it, you know, and you want to have that relationship with the grantees because you want to be able to be there when when things get hard and you could say, how can we help? You know what else can we do to support you? So is there anything that you can share with us if there's such a thing as a trend in philanthropy now? Is it don't advise funds? Is it setting up foundations? Is it going through Silicon Valley public foundation?

19:20 We have to know those people. Is there anything trending that you can speak about? Yeah, I can think of three things. One is donor advised funds, exactly what you said, that is the fastest growing philanthropic vehicle. And for anyone listening that doesn't know what that is, it's essentially really kind of an alternative to starting a Family Foundation or a foundation of any kind. It's often referred to as a charitable checking account where you can open a fund at your local Community Foundation at, you know, Fidelity Charitable or Schwab Charitable or wherever you have your money likely. And essentially that organization will handle all the back office of distributing the funds to whatever organization you want to support and kind of handling all the tax and legal issues and the reporting so.

20:07 You're essentially taking a charitable deduction, giving the tax benefits immediately when you allocate whatever amount of money. And you can do it with as little as $5000 or as much as you want. And then as often as you want, you can disperse that money. Just tell the donor, advised fund sponsor, I want to donate to whatever organization. Here's the amount, here's the information. And it's very easy. And there's other benefits. You don't aren't required to give away a certain percent of your assets annually as you are with a private foundation where you are required to give 5% of those foundation assets away. For example, provides for some more anonymity for the donor in terms of what you're funding. And it's easy, it's easier, it's less expensive. I'm not saying it's better or worse than a private foundation. It's just a, it's a great vehicle and it's really growing in scale.

20:56 Also, it's helpful when you know, let's say you have a liquidity event and it's coming up on the end of the year and you want to make a charitable donation, but you don't quite yet know what you want to support. You can put it in a donor advised fund and give yourself a little breathing room to figure out what causes or issues you actually care about. And get the tax right right away. Yes, and you get the tax benefit right away. So that's one trend for sure. I would say another trend, and this is what I'm seeing a lot in my work is succession planning in family philanthropy. And as we have, you know, as you know, a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth underway right now. A lot of the donors are aging out and thinking about how do I transfer my wealth not only to my children and grandchildren and heirs, but how do I ensure that our our philanthropy continues on. If that's a Family Foundation or donor advised funds or whatever it might be and really thinking about, you know, questions like how do I, I was just talking to a gentleman today about this actually, you know, how he wants to continue his Family Foundation in perpetuity long after he's gone and he's in his 80s and you know, he wants to have, but he doesn't want to lose control.

22:10 He doesn't want the board 40 years from now to be kind of funding Willy nilly all kinds of strange things that he didn't care about. So how do you balance getting clarity about what your values are, your priorities, the issues that are important to you as the donor and ensure that that kind of legacy is built into the foundation so that the board, you know, 40 years from now or 50, who is maybe, you know, has they're five years old today, right? There's nowhere, no one knows them. How do they have the information that they need to ensure that they're making the best decisions that align with the donor intent without that donor, like dictating from the grave, right? And without being handcuffed by so much restriction that they can't adapt to changing situations and changing environments.

23:02 Because of course, the world's going to be a different place in 40 years. And, you know, one of the things he cares about in particular is a, is a certain kind of cancer. Well, and that's what he's been funding the research around. Well, that's great. But in 40 years, that cancer might no longer exist. There could be a cure. So how do you have enough openness in that kind of legacy and those expectations while allowing that board to kind of stick with the goals and the original intent of the donor? One would think that that would be a natural sort of first principles thing to do in setting up the foundation, assuming that you wanted to last beyond your longevity it and it it is not the case. No, no.

23:48 And you're right, it should be. But you know, look, people have just like people have, you know, delay creating a will or an estate plan. People don't want to think about their demise, right? They don't want to think about not being around and they fear losing control and in their life and they think they're going to live forever like we all do, right? So you often put off those decisions until you're no longer physically capable or emotionally, mentally fully capable of making those decisions or God forbid something happens unexpectedly and you can't. And you know, a lot of it, as you know, in family philanthropy and family wealth has to do with ensuring kind of clarity of mission of the family, communication among the family. So everyone understands kind of what's happening. And and a lot of people are hesitant to do that with their adult children and grandchildren. And so, you know, oftentimes people feel like philanthropy is going to be the glue that brings the family together. But if you don't have those underlying principles in place of communication and engagement and education, then family, it's the same, right?

24:51 The family has the same quirks and, and issues that every family has. And tossing a bunch of philanthropic dollars on top of it isn't necessarily going to bring people together. So it just requires some thoughtful planning and it requires letting go and sometimes painful conversations. But so much easier to do that well. Everyone's healthy and you know. So that is a trend that you're seeing people finally adopting. Increasingly, yeah. And you know a lot of it's out of necessity because we have a non aging population. A lot of these original donors are in now and their 80s and 90s and recognizing that we need to do this, but it can be hard. I mean, I have another client right now that is a large multi generational Family Foundation where their first generation is passed on, but the second, third and 4th generations are all very much involved and on the board. It's a very large board, all family members. And they're trying to grapple with how do we, they've been around for 50 years.

25:51 How do we set ourselves up now so that we can be around 50 years from now and not just around, but thriving when the family has, you know, grown 10 times, you know, tenfold. And our assets might have grown, but we can't control what that is going to be like. And how do we, how do we think now about succession, next generation engagement and senior members of the board allowing the next generation to step in and them to step off without fearing that, well, they don't know what dad thought, right? Or they don't know what Graham Granddad thought. I know or I've been around for on this foundation for 30 years. You know, you can't.

26:32 It's fear of like losing that institutional memory and that family connection. So how do you build that in among the generations that never met the donors and don't have that personal connection to what they wanted to do? It just requires a bit of effort. Do you think that the when introducing this governance is a surprise to people? Well, sometimes, I mean, sometimes the board is comprised of family or sort of entitlement entitled family people who feel that they deserve to be on the board just because they're family members. And you know, that's fine at the beginning, I think. But then I think what's most more important is you bring on people that have expertise, knowledge, time to be committed to the organization so you really have the best board possible, not just who's around. I think oftentimes when these foundations start, there's no term limits.

27:28 You know, you're on lifetime appointments. Well, guess what? People don't want to let go of those because you know, they, they care, they want to give back, They feel connected. There's also a prestige of being on a for a foundation board. Sometimes you have money yourself to give away as a result and it's hard to pull that back if you don't set up term limits at the beginning. So I really encourage term limits so you can have bring in new ideas, new perspectives on an ongoing basis. And then, you know, I think governance has to evolve over time in any organization in a business and price regular fat non Family Foundation. So I think it's important to just put in regular practices like board self evaluations every year, a couple of years, maybe every 10 years, you know, do a review of what is the governance structure we have in place? Is this really what's working well, what's not working so well?

28:22 What changes can we make to improve how we work and you know, kind of creating that culture of agility and effectiveness? I'm kind of going back to where we started the conversation around evaluation. You know, you want to evaluate yourself as a foundation, as a philanthropic family, evaluate your governance, your staff, your systems and processes on a regular basis. Just to not to be overly complex about it, but just to understand what is working well, what isn't working so well, what improvements could we make today that would really pay off and you know, a lot in the future? You know, there it's struck me that I don't know a lot of I traffic and family offices, OK, let's just call it that, right? And I don't ever take a role like you are taking a role with them, which is not something I have an expertise or interest in.

29:14 But it doesn't, it struck me that there's not a lot of people like you who can help families do this sort of thing. However, there are a lot of people who are at money center banks and the big places that want to help you set up the foundation so they can manage the money. And some would say that's a conflict. I'm not sure there is. But my, my question is going to be, are the people embedded in those places that can effectively do your role? Maybe sometimes you know, what's is that? Are those people, Are there people there that can help like you do?

29:55 Yeah, it's a great question. At some of the large largest firms like Bank of America, JP Morgan, yes, they have whole philanthropic divisions of people that can provide that kind of support. However, that does require usually they're what person's actual wealth advisor that they're working with reaching out to their colleagues to get the support, which doesn't always happen. Sometimes they're just simply not aware of it. I'm not speaking specifically about Bank of America or JP Morgan, but others that I've I've talked to. So a, the wealth advisor has to avail themselves of the resources that they actually have in house. And if they do, that's great. And there's a lot of support that those organizations can provide. But in my experience, there is some limit to what they're able to do, right. So chances are that the like those staff, they might help, you know, meet with the family, help facilitate a family meeting, a family conversation about their giving, but aren't likely to conduct strategic planning for the Family Foundation, aren't likely to do a full succession plan for that family because they just have limited capacity and bandwidth of what they're able to provide and not able to provide. And there's some regulatory issues too, right? Sure, absolutely.

31:07 Yeah. And oftentimes they're not necessarily equipped to, you know, have the have those deeper conversations or deeper discussions or, you know, I think one thing that holds a lot of wealth advisory firms and family offices back is fear of losing the client. So if you like, I have no problem like kind of pushing back on my clients and saying why, like, why do you want to do that? Are you sure that's really a good idea? I think you're making a mistake or. Yeah, you're not risking AUM going out the door, right? Exactly, exactly. And there's a lot of value to I don't, I'm not trying to be obnoxious, I'm just trying to help them make the best decision and make sure that they really thought through what what they're doing. And exactly, I'm not worried about the AUM walking out the door.

31:54 Yeah, like I said, I don't think it's a doesn't have to be a conflict because if you're going to provide even to the extent that we've just discussed at those firms, the benefit of those other resources that the wealth advisor may have that costs money, nothing's free. So you have to pay for it somehow, right? It's a pay for through the aggregate of a web. Or are you going to pay for it and somebody like you that does it separately still has to pay for it, right? Exactly, Exactly. One thing that I think is problematic, I've seen a lot of firms offer free services to their clients in order to move their assets. Like if you move your assets over to us, we'll provide free succession planning for your foundation, will provide free strategic planning for your foundation, whatever it might be.

32:45 I have concerns about that because I just think of it as a, you know, you're trying to reel them in and your, your goal is really assets under management. And then you're not going to want to deploy those assets for philanthropic purposes. And you're not going to push back on the donor saying, you know, you're being obnoxious with your kid, like give them a break. But I I will do that. Right, of course. Yeah. It's it's easier to be direct and authentic and say what's really on your mind if you're if you're a, you know, And again, I think there's real value in all those places. I know a lot of those people and I think. Yeah, absolutely. If I'm a your colleague and I'm giving advice to your client about philanthropy, and I suggest they give away a lot of money and it's going to take it off your balance sheet, you might be, you know, taken in the back alley and beat up a little bit, right?

33:37 I think it's short sighted and I think it's actually an example of that scarcity mindset I talked about because, you know, you really have to think big picture. So yeah, maybe you're giving some of that assets under management away and it's decreasing, but you are providing a lot of value for that client, so. There's and the little trust. You're building trust and if you're if you're doing it well and engaging the next generations along the way and building your relationship with their kids or grandkids, then you're not likely to lose those clients when the original client is no longer and involved in the picture has passed away, which is a huge risk and a huge problem, as you know, for a lot of wealth advisors and you know, multi family offices for sure. So I think it's also thinking long term. And then, you know, honestly, there are a donor advised fund sponsoring organizations that allow the Families Wealth Advisor to continue managing those assets. Totally, totally.

34:31 There's a lot of creative options. We, we have friends that actually came from Danielle, a company called DAF Share that has basically a fintech that has made it so it's easy to put your DAF in there without disrupting anybody who's managing the money without any of that, and just make it easy for you to find places to deploy some of your DAF money. And at the sign of the times, yeah, you know, technology steps in and makes the process a little easier. Yeah. And behind the scenes and it can be a white glove offering that you can provide your clients. Totally, Yeah. So aside from what I highly recommend that people who are interested in the topic, Chris kindly sent me a copy and I was enjoyed it. Thank you.

35:22 Read the book. But is there other things like do you have a program where people can come onto the website, for example, or be in touch with you and start the process of realistically putting a plan in place? Yeah, thank you. Yes, I think one of the biggest challenges for families is they don't have a strategic family giving plan. They are giving reactively as one of my clients described it, giving in onesies, twosies, you know, just sort of giving here, giving there. Somebody asks you feel guilty, you make a grant or you're at the end of the year, the year you're scrambling, wishing you had thought more, been more thoughtful about the organization's you want to support. But you're trying to get money out the door for tax purposes.

36:03 And it's just too easy to give reactively and give out of guilt and kind of be overwhelmed by the process. So I am a big believer in creating family giving plans and I have a free master class. It's an on demand master class that your listeners, I'd love for you to check out. It's called 3 simple steps to creating a high impact family giving plan. It's an hour long and it provides I'm just real insights, the mistakes to avoid and three steps you can take to create that family giving plan. So you can find it at familyphilanthropysimplified.com back slash free training. So that's family philanthropysimplified.com back slash free training and it's a great resource because I think, you know, if you don't know where you're going, you're never going to get there.

36:49 And it doesn't have to be that complicated just to have clarity on what it is you want to accomplish with your philanthropy, how you want to accomplish it. Do you want to involve your family or not in the process? And what is that kind of 12 month road map that's going to help you get from where where you are today to where you want to be and a game plan to be able to implement that? Is there? Thanks for doing that. Thanks for sharing that with everybody. Is there back to trends for a minute? Is there any data or at least anecdotally you've seen there's people that are making a lots of money exiting companies, being part of a startup that got exited and all of a sudden they're, you know, worth, you know, 100 million bucks and may not even considered what to do with it besides, you know, buying a new Lamborghini or something.

37:40 What is the is there people continue to give to set up foundations, continue to give the charity in its various forms? Is there anything, any metrics that you've seen or experienced? Yeah. I haven't seen metrics on that, but I'd say a couple things. One is, you know, oftentimes we think about giving once we've made all the money, right, once we have all that money to give away. But I think it's actually more effective to be giving during in your lifetime in your 20s and 30s and 40s when you are making the money and not necessarily having it all or having all the time, but kind of building that philanthropic muscle, that giving muscle, whether it's donating to your local Community Foundation or any organization or be serving on a board of directors.

38:22 But because you learn so much as a donor by giving, there's a phrase I use which is like learning by grant making, like giving the money away is a great way to learn about how to give money away, right? What are the mistakes you made? Were the things you wish you did differently? What are the blind spots? But also what excites you? Like what? What was so fun and gave you joy about doing that? How do you want to replicate that in your in your work so that by the time you do exit or have some other liquidity event or inherit money, you're not then deer, oops, not then deer in the headlights. You have built that muscle and you have that much more knowledge and know how experienced you have a sense of what issues you care about. Don't care about as much the ways you want to have an impact. Do you want to be really involved and hands on? Do you want to be behind the scenes? Do you want to be anonymous?

39:10 You know, all those kinds of things you will have learned through the process. And so I really encourage people you know it doesn't. It doesn't have to be a lot of money, it doesn't have to be time consuming, but to begin to give in your lifetime so that you, when you have money to be much more strategic, thoughtful and impactful, it comes a lot easier to you. Yeah, totally makes sense. I think we've had a lot of people who are second generation that were brought up in an environment or part of their training from their parents was, OK, we're rich, so let's deal with that. So you know how to deal with that second, here's what it might be a good idea to build a muscle. You're going to make some money.

39:57 You're going to take so much to save it for yourself. You're going to take so much and you're going to do good to the extent that you can or want to. And that muscle is built by an early age of you've seen people putting programs in place to help the kids and the grandkids. Consider building that muscle even early on if it's just pennies. Yeah, I think you know, the classic sort of three jars strategy, you know when you get as a kid you get your allowance or you get birthday money or whatever it is, 1/3 of it for savings, 1/3 of it for spending and 1/3 of it for charity. And thinking about what are those issues? What are the, if it's give to the animals, great, let's donate to the local animal shelter, whatever it might be. But building in that awareness and that ownership of that process as well, even quite frankly, for little kids like just building in and a culture of sharing a culture of looking out for other people that might be disadvantaged or the new kid at school that doesn't know anyone, like befriending them.

40:54 You know, just thinking about helping others and being kind to others and looking out, paying attention to who might not be having as good of an experience as you are or is left out of the group. So I think and that too is a way that you can engage 3 year olds, you know, in kind of a culture and and family culture of, of giving and generosity. Have you, have you gotten any rumblings from your community and the people you talk to that all the stuff, the pullback for USAID has had an impact in any of the people that you are in a position to give away more money to fill those gaps?

41:37 And just for the record, I don't mind putting it on the record that it was. I believe there's tons and tons and tons of fraud in that. And so it's probably a good idea. A lot of it shut down. But that's just my opinion. But it's also had impact to those charities that are doing good. Well, a couple thoughts. One is, you know, the government is giving away or, you know, funding way more than philanthropy ever could. So philanthropy could never fill the void of what the just in the US, the US government does in terms of education funding, Human Services, USAID. Even if all of them, you know, every billionaire gave all of their money away, I think it still wouldn't, you know, amount to as much as the government is able to do.

42:17 So that's just a perspective I think to have. Like philanthropy is not going to solve the problem, but philanthropy can be really helpful is taking risks, you know, being that kind of risk taking funder to try new ideas and not worry that it's going to flop because, you know, OK, well, we learned something. Now we can try something different or, you know, testing the model and then the model proves successful and then you can scale the model and then the government or the government could scale the model right at even a greater scale. So I think there's a lot of value in philanthropy and in working in partnership with government, be it federal, state, local, there's a lot of value there. I also think yes. And to answer your original question, I absolutely have a lot of clients and know of a lot of nonprofits that were dramatically hurt through the completely unexpected elimination of USAID dollars to their organizations, to the organizations they were partnering with.

43:08 It caused a lot of damage to the, you know, the great work that was being done. As I understand it, I haven't seen the data, but I've heard this. And I wouldn't just, I think it's worth reviewing that a lot of people have died because they didn't have access to the resources, medications, services that were being provided by organizations around the world. And so, you know, I think in philanthropy, phrase that is often used is first, do no harm. And it means, you know, just because you have money and you're giving it away doesn't mean you can't actually harm people in the process of doing that because you do it ineffectively or without thought or because you pull the plug organizations one day, which is essentially what the federal government did. And so that is not an effective way to identify problems or fix them or be thoughtful stewards of public or private dollars. Yeah, yeah, there's it was massive, whatever the outcome was there, no matter what you do and that big of a scale, it's going to hurt people, maybe unintentionally, but maybe not. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate your perspective on that as well. So I would encourage everybody to grab the book. You can get it anywhere, right?

44:28 Yeah, Amazon, I'll just pull up delusional altruism. Of course it's backwards, but delusional altruism, it's available. Amazon, barnesandnoble.com, I think booksamillion.com, probably. Other places, absolutely. Yeah. And no, go ahead. I'll just also say, you know, I think one of the, I think one of the misguided beliefs that a lot of donors have is that, you know, giving away money is easy. And I'm not saying it's rocket science, but I am, I am suggesting that it's harder than you think and requires investment in yourself. And so just if it's buying a book and reading a book, if it's retaining an advisor, if it's watching my free master class, if it's listening to a webinar, watching a webinar or a podcast, it really is important to invest in yourself, invest in your own learning.

45:21 If you need to bring on support, just like you might bring on a family office or you might retain a state planning attorney. And it's important to invest in the success of your philanthropy so that you can have the greatest impact on whatever issue or 'cause you want to support. Yeah, right. Like a business. I love your suggestion though, even before you have the big exit to start building the muscle and learn. It's kind of like the same thing you learn by doing, right? Right, like investing, right? You, you start small with what you have, right? So that when the stakes are big, you're much more savvy in how you're investing. Chris, thanks for doing this, really appreciate it. Thanks again to Danielle.

46:03 Big shout out for putting us together. Maybe in a in a few months, if it's OK with you, we can do this again and sort of catch up on trends and talk more about what's going on. That would be great. I'd love it. Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Arthur. Thank you everybody for joining in. Bye bye.