Family foundation giving policy

Will those who follow you–your sons and daughters–fulfill your charitable intentions? Have you ensured they understand what you mean by what you have said in your final documents?

At our last family meeting, in discussing our charitable interests, one of our sons-in-law said he had no idea how we made choices concerning to whom we would give. At the time, I thought that was rather strange. I thought we had delineated our interests and policies rather well in our Family Wealth Letter of Intent. But apparently not.

So our legacy planners drafted what they called a “Holzmann Family Foundation Gifting Criteria” document and asked me, last week, to modify it for our next family meeting (a meeting to be held later this morning).

As our legacy planners explained, the policy statement “was constructed through the conversations that we have had and what you had put in writing in your prior plan. It is intended to be a guide for the foundation and for potential ministries/charitable organizations.”

Oh!

Sarita and I, both, were rather taken aback by what we read.

The document seems to ignore our highest priorities. (When we looked really hard, we found those priorities mentioned. But they are expressed in a way that makes them lesser priorities and they are expressed in words totally foreign to how we would express them. Therefore, I’d expect, they would be easily ignored and/or misconstrued if and when Sarita and I are no longer around.)
The document they drafted advances interests to very high priority that, at best, are extremely low priorities for us. And,
It implicitly promotes certain practices or policies that we have no interest in pursuing. (“For more information, or to submit a giving request, please contact . . . ,” it concludes. But we have no interest in having people contact us. We are not open to additional opportunities at this time.)

Based on this interpretation of things we thought we had clearly spelled out, it’s easy to see how and why different institutions, founded upon certain principles, wind up straying far from them. And if so, I committed myself to writing a completely new document, as our advisors recommended.

I finished the first draft last night.

It wasn’t an easy matter. Despite sensing I knew what I wanted to say, I think I invested about four hours in the draft. It’s just that tough to forge a clear, concise, complete, and accurate policy statement. And I don’t even know whether I have written a document that meets all those criteria! –Guess we’ll find out later this morning at our upcoming family meeting.

One more example, I think, of how we need to “work the clay” until it is malleable.

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