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| Best Practices |
Fortifying Foundations
Darlene Siska
08/02/2004
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Despite this,
many first-generation family foundations reach a stage in their life cycles when
passion begins to flag, and backers must decide whether—and how—to continue.
Indeed, an intergenerational change is often the catalyst for families to
reconsider the amount of time and effort they are willing to devote.
Green
anticipates that many of the philanthropists who launched foundations in the
1990s will eventually succumb to founding-family burnout. As these
first-generation donors die off or discover just how much work it takes to
achieve their philanthropic goals, outsourcing may provide a welcome
respite.
Shrunken Overheads
Those of us who run foundations with endowments ranging
between $10 million and $50 million may find that outsourcing is a good way to
minimize our overhead by eliminating the need for an in-house, full-time staff,
the expenses of which can eat into resources that would otherwise go to grant
making. “At that asset level you’ll be making pretty significant grants, and you
need to have a feel for organizations you’ll be supporting,” says Charlie Casey,
general manager of Pacific Foundation Services, which works with private
foundations to design and implement their giving strategies. Outsourcing
administration allows us to direct our efforts toward researching potential
recipients rather than toward overseeing our foundation’s administrative and
operational tasks.
With larger foundations—those with more than $50 million
in assets—the issue becomes a little murkier. “Large foundations can outsource,”
Casey notes, “but they can get so involved in the depths of grant making, and
spend so much time, that it makes sense for them to set up their own
staffs.”
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