Maximizing the Return on Your Philanthropic Dollars

To help families meet their philanthropic goals and make a measurable difference, in this 2011 FOX Fall Forum session the speaker recommends allocating charitable dollars much the way an individual would allocate investment dollars. 

• A structured approach to charitable giving allows families to meet their philanthropic goals and ensure they are maximizing the return on their gifts. Identifying a need to tie everything together for clients, Hemenway & Barnes developed tools that organize a client’s philanthropic goals across the family and help them understanding how they are investing their philanthropic dollars and time. 
• Using a “Philanthropy Dashboard,” clients can track not just how they are doing but what they are doing, allowing them to make the right decisions. This strategy allocates and tracks philanthropy investments similarly to a family’s for-profit investments by using a unique “philanthropic asset class” approach. Asset classes identified include traditional gifts and bequests, donor-advised funds, planned giving vehicles, and other buckets to track socially responsible and impact investments, community investments and microfinance options, among others. 
• The Philanthropy Dashboard, which is populated with information collected in a detailed questionnaire, gives families a sense of who they are and enables them to measure the outcomes of their efforts. 
• The Philanthropy Dashboard is included in the slide deck.