First, what we aren’t. We are not a conventional foundation management or advisory service. We make the assumption that our clients have a wealth management team in place, may have a family office, and probably already engage in philanthropy through annual individual giving, donor advised funds or a family foundation. Though we happily coordinate with financial advisors, especially when it comes to structuring your financial support for a project, our role is different.  Our sole purpose is to find out what personal values and causes our clients care about most deeply, then lead them to the Social Entrepreneurs doing the most powerful work in these areas.

 

Along the way we give clients the benefit of our finger on the pulse -- the best literature and breaking news on issues, solutions, and emerging leaders.  We also arrange travel for clients and their families to experience a project firsthand. So our services don’t stop at reports, analyses, recommendations. We do whatever it takes to make the journey of discovering exciting projects as fulfilling as the ultimate destination—your investment in a potentially world-shifting endeavor.

 

 

 

In many ways how we work with clients reflects Women’s High Engagement Philanthropy itself.  We empower a woman at any stage of her philanthropic journey to make informed decisions through a one-on-one relationship with her.  We share information and resources, create a network of connections between her and the world of social innovation, and foster collaborative relationships.  

 

The initial phase of the journey consists of meetings with a client,  and her family as well, to explore personal values and desired impact. In this phase we also get a sense of a client’s personal style, often an important element in helping us identify an organization with the right fit.   We can arrange family meetings where we will facilitate discussions and lead exercises designed to help a clients and her family focus on individual and shared values and history.  The results can catalyze discussions across generations and help clarify a family’s philanthropic vision and goals.  This process is, itself, satisfying and meaningful; it also helps us guide clients to projects that are fulfilling as well as effective. If desired, we can arrange for the family meeting to be recorded on audio or videotape as an important family document for future generations.

 

 

 

From this point we can start to identify projects and players of interest.  We stay in close communication, keeping clients up to date with what we’re finding, what solutions are emerging, who is doing intriguing work in the focus area.  When we can create a short list of promising projects we will refine the list with the client, then encourage her to go into the field with us to see the project firsthand—meeting the leaders, getting a sense of the project in operation.  This is an invaluable exercise.  Not only does it make the project real, it engages our clients’ lifetime’s experience in judging character and capability and their ability to tease substance from marketing message. We develop these site visits  in coordination with the organization visited, and can also build into an itinerary additional cultural and educational travel that expands your understanding of the host society and environment. Site visits and cultural travel are ideal opportunities to bring teenaged or young adult children into the philanthropic experience.

 

 

 

The penultimate step in the process is our invitation to clients’ chosen organizations to develop grant proposals. The objective is for the client, NPA, and the Social Entrepreneur to identify a need where strategic funding will allow an organization to take a significant step in its development. This often takes the form of a conversation, a back and forth process of developing specific goals, agreeing on a protocol of progress reports, and articulating the criteria for success and means of measurement. It is at this point that a client may wish us to coordinate with financial advisors to develop the structure of a potential philanthropic investment.

 

Finally, the investment.  If a client has visited the organization, believe in its mission and method, is ready to invest resources to lever it to the next stage of growth, she probably feels strongly enough to invest some of her own time and energy supporting it.  Whether in the form of joining the Board, connecting friends to the organization and its work, exploring internships for children or grandchildren and volunteer opportunities for herself, a woman donor’s greatest satisfaction may be in the fruitful relationships and personal involvement she enjoys with  the organizations she supports.