Webcast: Defining Your Family's Philanthropic Purpose

Tony Macklin:  Welcome, everybody, to Defining Your Family's Philanthropic Purpose, a webinar sponsored by Schwab Charitable and the National Center for Family Philanthropy. We have quite a few people registered, so we’re going to give a bit for everybody to get logged in and their screens up and everything. So hang tight, we’ll be with you in a minute here.

For those of you just logging in, we’re going to give seconds more to get everybody logged in. We have quite a crowd attending this webinar. Then we’ll get started.

Okay, I think we got where we are for the moment.

Welcome, everybody. This is the Defining Your Family’s Philanthropic Purpose webinar, the first is a series of the new Charitable Giving Guide, sponsored by Schwab Charitable and the National Center for Family Philanthropy.

Before we jump into the content some quick logistics for today. 

If you have questions for our speakers, please feel free to submit those questions into the Q&A box on your control panel at the bottom of the screen, or use the chat function. We'll try to capture those a little bit later in the webinar.

If you need to, you can use the Live Transcript button at the bottom of Zoom to get closed-captioning or a live transcript to augment the audio. And finally, toward the end of this, we will be sending later this week or next week, we'll be sending a recording out along with the transcripts. You'll have a backup of this in case you can't make the whole webinar and you want to share the information with other folks in your family or in your firm. My name is Tony Macklin. I'm a senior program consultant for the National Center for Family Philanthropy and today's facilitator and host for the webinar. I'm going to turn things over to Fred Kaynor from Schwab Charitable to say a little bit more about the series. Go ahead, Fred.

Fred Kaynor:  Tony, thank you very much and hello everyone. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you so much for giving us some of your time. My name is Fred Kaynor and I am the vice President of Business Development, Marketing and Strategic Partnerships for Schwab Charitable. Schwab Charitable is one of the largest national donor-advised funds in the country. And our mission is to increase charitable giving in the United States. And to that end, we want to do whatever we can in conjunction with Tony and the National Center for Family Philanthropy, to empower families, to define and pursue their charitable goals together through the use of a variety of tools and resources that will help to promote effective and impactful informed family philanthropy. So, we know that family giving is on the rise. We have seen a recent study from Bank of America issued in 2021, which stated that nine out of every 10 affluent households in the United States donated significantly to charity, in the previous year in 2020.

And we've also seen that over the last three years, that same study has found an increasing number of affluent families have a charitable provision in their will and more are even using it for planned giving vehicles. So it's… needless to say, among families, we are seeing an increase in charitable giving and an increase in prioritizing philanthropy, as a priority for the family overall. So, to best support families that are really embracing philanthropy and charitable giving more and more as a priority, we began this wonderful collaboration with the National Center for Family Philanthropy, to develop and deploy a series of guidebooks, roadmaps, videos, and other resources that help to address timely and relevant topics for donors and their families as they seek to really maximize their collective family philanthropy.

So, this series is a series of five topics for which there will be separate resources. The five topics include defining a philanthropic purpose, identifying the appropriate philanthropic vehicles to leverage, considerations around social impact strategies, governance, and family dynamics, and then, finally, succession and legacy. And this particular webinar we're going to tackle the first of those topics, Defining your Philanthropic Purpose . So, again, I want to thank Tony and all of those at NCFP, who've worked so hard at bringing this project to life. It's been a wonderful collaboration for which we've been extremely grateful. And as Tony mentioned, he's going to be facilitating and leading the conversation today. So with that, I am very pleased and honored to be joined by Jean Buckley, who is President of the Tracy Family Foundation. And Megan Costigan, a third generation member and program manager, also at the Tracy Family Foundation. So, with that, Tony, if I may, I'll just turn it back over to you.

Tony Macklin:  Great. Thank you, Fred. We're going to bring Jean and Megan in a little bit later. First, we want to let you know what is in the Guidebook and Roadmap. You should have received links to those in the preview information for the webinar, but I'll run through them. So as Fred said, Schwab Charitable and National Center for Family Philanthropy are producing five guides and roadmaps. You see the topics here again, we're covering the first one, Defining your Philanthropic Purpose  today. For each of those topics, you'll see a guide that's a longer document with a set of contextual information about the topic, the types of choices that families and couples make in their philanthropy around that topic, and worksheets to help you document your preferences and choices, as you're thinking about the topic.

You'll also find a family roadmap, which is a chance for you to say, "Okay, we've got multiple family members who've been thinking about the topic. How do we create a shared vision or mission or roadmap for what we want to be in this case around our philanthropic purpose?" And this a document you can fill out either by hand or online. And then for each topic, you'll also find a four to five minute intro video, that gives your family an overview, or if you're a Schwab advisor, something you can send out to families to peak their interest about the workbooks and the roadmaps. You'll see a link to these features a little bit later. And you'll also see that Jen Crino from NCFP is dropping them in the chat in case you hadn't had a chance to download them yet. In this series of guidebooks, we do come up with a couple of definitions that are worth covering. So our take on philanthropy is maybe a bit bigger one than traditional, just charitable giving.

It's really all the voluntary actions you take for social impact or public good. So, it could be your giving and grant making, but it's also your volunteering. Maybe some of you are investing for social and environmental impact. Some families or individuals will build social enterprises as a piece of their impact work, do advocacy, take other actions that really intentionally benefit others. And so, we think a big picture about philanthropy, you'll see that popping out across all five guides to help you think bigger picture than giving to 501(c)(3) charities. By the same token, family philanthropy in these guides at the core is when a group of family members self-define, take those actions, but that's family, as you define it. So, it could be your biological family, people who have adopted in family of choices, as some people would say, or even friends and coworkers or other members of your family business.

So, whoever you're bringing together with your family or alongside your family to make decisions about your philanthropy, either strategy or governance or the actual execution of it, they should have a chance to think about these materials with you and go through the workbooks and roadmaps along the way. So, what's in the philanthropic purpose workbook and guide? Philanthropic purpose really asserts your why of your philanthropy. And it's important to do that, especially early on in your philanthropic work, because your why can help guide your group decision-making, whether it's just you or you and a spouse or a whole family. It can bring heart and soul to the use of your philanthropic resources. So, really help you be more proactive and thoughtful and values-driven about your giving, and help you provide some more clearer donor intent in case you want to leave resources to future generations and have them manage your philanthropic resources after you pass away.

And the more you can document about your values, the more they can sort of align the actions along with those. So there are five parts to the philanthropic purpose. The first, is defining your motivations, really your underlying reasons for driving and inspiring your philanthropy. And the guidebook asks you to think back, like what sort of really prompted you to want to create a donor-advised fund or give out of your checkbook or whatever you might be using and could be faith driven, could be mentors that inspired you. It might be compelling needs in the world, it might be personal experiences you have. So what sort of motivated your chance to dive in on philanthropy? It's always a great conversation for families. The second is defining your values and principles and a chance for you to think about like what values animate who I am as a person, really drive my decision-making? What drives decision-making as a couple or as a family? Sort of your moral compass, if you will, that shapes your character in decisions.

And you'll see in the guidebook, words like ‘authenticity’ or ‘diversity’ or ‘joy’ or ‘freedom,’ and you can pick ones that resonate for you. Each family member will do the same, and you can talk about which ones animate each of your individual philanthropy and ones that might animate your family philanthropy as you work together over time. The third piece you'll see is defining your philanthropic priorities. There's a chance to say, where and what do you want to make a difference in most? All of us get pulled in lots of different directions for needs and opportunities in the world, or even in our own local communities, and smart philanthropists start figuring out, "Okay, we might be responsive to something, but we really want to dive in and help a certain population." Kids in need, mothers who've got cancer, whatever the population is that makes sense to you.

For some donors, it's about really being place based. "I want to make a difference in my hometown." Or, "In this country where girls don't have easy access to education," or, "In a place that's been damaged by a hurricane or floods or something." So, they think geography about a priority. Some people are really driven by issues, so they want to go all in on homelessness or arts access or K12 education and maybe more agnostic about geography. And then, finally, some people are driven by ideals and institutions. So, some donors might say, "I want to make sure I can take care of all of these museums and libraries in a certain way, or I've got certain kinds of values and ideals, I want to make sure get injected into communities or into organizations. Any of those is the right answer, and it may be a mix of them for you, but, again, the same conversation, what's driving your priorities and why did you choose them?
Same for the other family members, and you find some commonalities across those different preferences along the way. Fourth thing you'll see, this may be a bit newer to you, is your giving style. As you'll see in the guidebook, this is really thinking about like what's your approach to solving problems in the world? For some people, their philanthropy is animated by something like relief. Like, "I just want to make sure people's lives are better off." Sort of give them the fish, help the hungry, meet those basic needs. For other people, they think about reforming things like, "Okay, I want to make sure that policies and practices change." Maybe in local organizations, maybe public policies, maybe the way that organizations collaborate and work together or the way that the business sector responds to an issue. So, thinking sort of upstream on a problem as some families would call it.

Some families, their problem solving approach is all about innovation. Just talked to a donor yesterday, really thinking about how do they bring new innovation ideas to an old social service problem, and can technology help sort of speed solutions or speed changes in that area? Giving style's also about your operational choices. These are things you'll keep returning to over time, but what's your initial thought about the lifespan of your philanthropy? Do you want to give all your money away while you're living? Do you want to give your money away in a couple of generations, like the Gates Foundation, for instance, or lots of other donors. Or do you want to have something that's endowed and therefore family members or communities over the long run, and you'll see some choice points in the guidebook to help you think about lifespan and we'll re-tackle that in one of the other future guidebooks as well.

So, think about some of those kinds of issues. Same as like, do you want to collaborate with other families or not? Do you want to be public about your philanthropy or not? The more you can sort of think your initial preferences on this, the more it helps your family understand how to work together and whether they want to be public or collaborative or short term or long term in their approach. And finally, the guide and the family roadmap help you bring all that information together into a purpose or a mission statement. We don't care what you call this, it's more about, try to get two or three sentences down to say, "This is really who we are as a philanthropist, or as a philanthropic family." So, you might call it a purpose or vision statement. How you'll work together toward a better world.

Some people will add a vision statement, something that's bigger picture, more long range, more aspirational. Some people will write a family credo that really puts their values and principles into action and say how we will work and who we will show up as a family, how we might partner with grantees, how we like to be in our communities. Some people might inject all that information into a legacy statement, something that you write down and lives alongside of your estate planning tools or your wealth management plans. Some people will do legacy videos or audio recordings, and it can be a great way for family members to tell stories, to help say more than you can say in writing about what your purpose and your values and your mission are.

So, you'll find all of those materials and help guides in the guidebook and in the roadmap. There are tips in there to help you think about how to engage your family or other folks in those conversations. And we'll come back to some of those tips in a few minutes. But let's dive in and hear how Jean and Megan and their family, tackles some of these types of issues. They use their own knowhow in thinking about values and vision before these kinds of guidebooks came out. So, we're interested to see sort of what they were up to as they thought about their own family’s philanthropy. So, Jean and Megan, if I can bring you back and Fred, you can come on screen as well. And Jean why don't you just reintroduce yourself within your family's sort of generation, and Megan, same.

Jean Buckley:  Yeah, I'm happy to. Well, hi everybody. Thanks for having us here. And I'm Jean Buckley and I serve as the President of the Tracy Family Foundation. I'm considered a 2G, that would be a second generation in our language. We call ourselves 2Gs. I'm one of 12. I have 11 siblings, so one of 12. And I've been President of the Tracy Family Foundation since 1997. So did you want… Megan?

Megan Costigan:  And I'm Megan Costigan. I'm a third generation or a 3G of the Tracy Family. I'm one of 47 descendants of the 12 kids. There are 63, I believe, with spouses in a third generation. And I serve as a program manager for the foundation.

Tony Macklin:  Great. So, for all of you who are listening, if you're just in your first generation, here's your chance to look ahead at what happens when you've got more and more kids and grandkids coming along. Jean, let's start with you. I'm interested a little bit, just give us some context on the Tracy Family Foundation. How did it come to be and sort of what's been happening over the years?

Jean Buckley:  Yeah, I'm happy to, and I forgot to mention, Tony, that Megan and I are mother-daughter. So, that's really important as well, interesting for people. But, anyway, sure, I'm happy to talk a little bit about the origin of basically the Tracy family philanthropic journey. And it started with mom and dad, started with Megan's grandma and grandpa, and the picture that you all see there on the slide that should help weave together the story, the Tracy family and our philanthropic journey. So mom and dad started a company called Dot Foods. They started this from scratch in 1960 when they had eight children, which grew, eventually they had 12 kids. And today within those 12 branches of the Tracy family, there's 132 living family members in the second, third and fourth generation.

And the business is named after mom. Back in the day, Dot was a nickname for Dorothy. And this business, which has now evolved into a very large private family business. So in thinking about... that's a little bit of the background of the family. So, in thinking about the concept of how this family foundation came to be, I would tell you that for the first 30 years of Dot, Dot was very philanthropic, but their contributions, they weren't done in a very organized and structured way. It was like many people, your friends ask for money, nonprofits ask corporations for money. So anyway, that's how it operated from about 1960 to 1997. And then in 1996, one of my brothers was asked by the Dot board to prepare a plan on corporate philanthropy. Dot, at that time was seeking to develop a more tax efficient vehicle for the distribution of the grants.

And so, long story short, after networking with the family, the decision was made to start a private family foundation. And the decision was made that this private family foundation would be funded by pretax profits from the company, from our private family business. And so, we had to bring in all the family for all... at that time it was the 12 siblings and spouses who brought them all in on the decision, because at the end of the day, it was really going to impact dividends, if the foundation was to be funded by pre-tax profits. And so everybody, mom, dad, the 12 kids and spouses, we all had a voice in making this decision to start this private family foundation. So, hopefully that gives you a little bit of context about how we started.

Tony Macklin:  That does, and I'm curious, so you got the family all together, at least in those initial years, how did you come together to define your own shared values or principles or motivations?

Jean Buckley:  So we always, as a family, we try to bring the family in, we try to have buy-in from the family in lots of decisions that we make, and, certainly, this one with the family foundation. And so our process, as far as coming up with our values was to include the board and the family at large. And so, initially, what we did is the values... I would say that the values were stated as the values of Robert and Dorothy Tracy. When the foundation was formed, Tony, in 1997, Megan's generation, the third generation, they were little babies. And I think the oldest one was maybe in high school. And so, they weren't brought into the conversation at that point in time, they were just very young. And I can still remember the 2Gs, my generation, sitting around a board table and we just talked about the values of mom and dad.

We talked about what do mom and dad... what do they value? They valued integrity. They valued hard work. They valued honesty. They were faith based. We went through that whole drill. And it takes a little while, quite honestly, to just really settle in on some of these values because you certainly don't want to have 500 values. So, it took a little while just to settle in on some of the core values. And then what happened is a couple of years ago, we were in the process of developing a 20-year-long range plan for the foundation. And so, we did another values exercise, and we included both the 2Gs and the 3Gs. We recognized, and like I said, the 3Gs didn't have a voice in these first values.

And so, we did an exercise and we did it at an annual family meeting and we started with 48 values. And we went through a process where we actually got it whittled down to five values, that being faith, family, education, community, and leadership. And then we defined these values. And then, we also went so far as we explained why the value. So as people go along, people pass away... really board members, family members that didn't know mom and dad or even my generation at some point, they'll understand why we came up with those values. So, we define the value, we explain the why, and now we communicate our values as the values of the Robert and Dorothy Tracy family. So it's not just mom and dad. It's the Robert and Dorothy Tracy family.

Tony Macklin:  And Jean, did you use a facilitator for that session or did you facilitate just within the family?

Jean Buckley:  No, we did not. I have a lot of siblings that are very skilled in facilitating with the work that they do. So, we did not use a facilitator, but certainly that is something that many people do. And I think it's a great idea

.
Tony Macklin:  And I'm curious, do you see those values showing up then back in the company or in other family members philanthropy, as they're doing things outside of the foundation?

Jean Buckley:  Well, the company has their own set of values and the company also has their own separate corporate giving program. They have a bucket of pretax profits. They go to the corporate side and a percentage that goes to the Family Foundation. So, the company has their own stuff, their own focus areas, their own values. And certainly, their values can be very reflective, but similar to some of ours because it's mom and dad.

Tony Macklin:  That's great. Thank you. That's clarification. For those of you in the audience, some families create a value statement and principles and everything that encompass all of their different philanthropic vehicles, including their family business. Some have different sets for different vehicles or the business and the family donor-advised fund and family foundation. You have to decide what's right for you, but know that there's a spectrum of choices right there. But bring Megan in on this and say a little bit, Megan, about how the family arrived then at shared priorities. You've got lots of things you could be doing, but how did you dive in and say, "This is our how and what." And I'll pull your slide out for you.

Megan Costigan:  Yeah. So, initially, we really had just a couple, you know, three initial priorities, which were youth, family and education. And as Jean said, those were really selected by the 2Gs in the early stages of this process. And so, the 3Gs, we were all pretty young and so, we just weren't invited at that time to be included for obvious reasons. And then a couple years ago, we recognized the 3Gs never had the opportunity to select a focus area. So, we went through a process with just the 3Gs. We included the 3Gs and their spouses in the process. And ultimately, we were able to select a new focus area for the foundation. Through that process... we love family surveys. And so we started with a family survey. We asked the 3Gs to submit their ideas for a new potential TFF focus area.

And then we, and the TFF staff, we researched those top choices to better understand their relevance and really what their need was, or if there is a need in the West Central Illinois funding region, where we give a lot of our funding to. And so, once that research was completed, we narrowed down that list of focus area possibilities to five. From there, we presented those at our Tracy Family Foundation retreat, which we do about every two years. And then again, after that, we did more research and we ultimately presented that additional research via video to the third generation family members and asked them to vote for their preferred new focus area. And through that process, our new focus area is mental health. So, we're still really in that research phase and we've funded a little bit in the area, but it's just been about almost a year and a half, two years. And so, we're still really doing a lot of research and haven't done too much funding yet in that area.

Tony Macklin:  The initial list of issues, was there a long-time pattern of giving within the family or the foundation or like mental health, were a couple of those new to the family as well?
Megan Costigan:  I would say personally, a lot of family members were giving in the mental health focus area. But as a family foundation, we were not doing anything with mental health prior to this. And it seems like everybody's talking about mental health in today's world and just trying to navigate this new world that we live in. And so, I think the third generation really recognized that there's a huge gap in so many communities nationwide. And so, we really wanted to try to make a difference.

Tony Macklin:  I know we're going to have questions from the audience and we did in the registration materials about sort of engaging the younger generations in this process. So, tell us a little bit about this Next Generation Grant Program and Matching Grant Program as a piece of this equation.

Megan Costigan:  Yeah. So, since the foundation was founded, the family has really always wanted to have dollars available, both to satisfy personal philanthropic interest areas, but also to have dollars available for the foundation's board staff and then family to really rally around to drive that programming in West Central Illinois. And so, about 65% of our budget is directed to our focus areas where the foundation's board and the staff make those funding decisions. And then the other 35% of the budget is directed to two primary family giving programs. And those programs really help to satisfy the individual philanthropic interest areas.

And those two programs, as you mentioned, Tony, one is the Matching Grant. And then the other is the Next Gen Grant program. So first, I'll just touch on the Matching Grant Program. So this program is available to all family members, ages 16 and older. So, if a family member donates... $50 is the minimum, and we chose that minimum because at the age of 16, you don't have a lot of extra cash. And so, we wanted to try to encourage those younger youth to still be able to participate in the program. So, once a family member donates, they can request matching dollars from the foundation. And then, depending on the family member's age, they can request a match of a one-to-one ratio, up to a five-to-one ratio. When we started that program in 1998, and at that time each eligible family member was eligible to request $500 annually. And now, that's up to $60,000 annually. So, you can see how the foundation has grown over the years.

Tony Macklin:  Again, maybe Jean can weigh in. So, those Matching Grants and the Next Gen Grant Program, do they still need to all follow the family’s core set of values and these interest areas? Can they sway somewhere in the middle from them or completely different from them?

Megan Costigan:  They do, yeah. They need to fall within the values of the foundation.

Jean Buckley:  Don't have to fall within the focus areas, Tony. They just have to be in keeping with the mission and the values. And then, there will be questions on the grant application that the family member has to submit. Like, would most of the family agree with this? Would Robert and Dorothy Tracy agree with this? So, we're trying to really keep the values front and center.

Tony Macklin:  And it's a great way folks in the audience, the Tracy family is keeping the family's values alive by sort of keeping them in front of the family members, as they're thinking about grant proposals or grant decisions. But also people get a chance, it sounds like, to sort of define how those values live out within their own generation or their own issues that they're interested in their own communities. Quick question from the audience for the two of you. Were the Family Foundation's values a factor in selecting that new program area, mental health, for instance, what's the connection that you saw?

Megan Costigan:  Yeah, we went through a values exercise and the third generation did, and through that... I can't remember how many values we started with, but it included values and interest areas. And from there, we narrowed it down to whichever one really got the most votes. And I think at the end of the day, we all have the same core set of values. Yes, they differ a little bit from person to person, but those core values are really pretty similar across the board. And so, I think it was pretty easy and I think selecting that mental health focus area, it was almost a unanimous decision, it seemed like when it came to the end of it.

Tony Macklin:  That's great. For those of you in the audience, you might have caught through this, a really great tip for you to take away. The Tracy family not only wrote these things down, their values or their principles, they added some language about what they actually mean. So, it's one thing for a family to go through an exercise and say, "Our five values are honor and charity," or whatever, but then next, "What does that mean for this particular family?" A sentence or a phrase really helps capture it for folks, how do you live it out. So, I think they went that extra mile on that, which I think makes a lot of sense. Fred, I want to bring you back in and I'm going to tee up a question for Gina and Megan, and then you. So these values, these priorities, the motivations, talk a little bit about the storytelling aspect. How do they get told in stories from generation to generation?

Fred Kaynor:  Sure. We found that cultivating sort of a culture of family philanthropy by sharing stories and examples, personal anecdotal examples can really be a powerful opportunity to elevate the engagement from all those family members. There was a study done, actually Tony, by the Lilly School of Philanthropy, that suggests 81% of adult children that give generously to philanthropic causes, do so when their parents give. So, there's a direct correlation between how multiple generations share stories together as a way to sort of ensure that philanthropic giving is consistent across those generations. So, it's a really powerful example. We also hear the same things from many Schwab Charitable donors, that it's a simple, but really profound way to sort of initially connect with children and grandchildren through stories and share memories and experiences about sort of a giving tradition that they had with their parents and their grandparents and pass along a legacy.

We work with families to help them determine which giving vehicles or a combination of vehicles, would allow them to sort of achieve their philanthropic goals. We offer a donor-advised fund. There are multiple vehicles. Obviously, Jean and Megan, you utilize many of them because there are multiple objectives in a family. And there are multiple ways to achieve those objectives with not just one vehicle, but multiple vehicles. But regardless, we found that in our experience, we find that philanthropy is a way for families to really embrace the joy of giving, and having a structure to help them pass down their values, create that lasting legacy and sort of connect with family members in a meaningful way. A choice of vehicles is really driven by, as I said, the family's mission and their philanthropic purpose. So it's... sorry.

Tony Macklin:  No, that's great. That’s great. Jean and Megan, so obviously, you have lots of things written down. It's up on your website. How are you passing down some of these things through storytelling or audio or visual? What other ways are you sort of helping people understand what's going on?

Jean Buckley:  I can…

Megan Costigan:  Go ahead.

Jean Buckley:  Go ahead, Meg.

Megan Costigan:  Well, one example is, Fred, you're talking about starting young and passing down those values to the younger children and another program that we have is our Next Generation Grant Program. And that's for family members ages five to 30. And depending on their age, they can request a TFF grant from $1,000 to $5,000 and they are required to do site visits. And then, once you hit the age of 18, you can do a site visit or a phone interview, but that's a way... the parents, when the kids are really young as 5, 6, 7, and even really into junior high or high school, the parents are going with them. And so, they're helping them really think through what do you care... like, my youngest just turned five this year. And so I'm asking her, ‘what do you care about’ in the language that a five year old can understand and trying to get her to participate and just give back in a way that she can somewhat comprehend.

But just getting the younger kids out there in the community and seeing what the needs are and where the gaps are. It just really instills those values at that young age. And I think it helps them when you start young, you naturally just kind of start to carry that through life. And it becomes part of who you are. Something else that we did just recently actually, we finished putting together some new TFF videos. And so, we've broken down the videos into nine separate videos and it really helps tell the story of the foundation. So, it goes into the history and how we came about and it talks about RT and Dorothy, my grandma and grandpa, and then it talks about each of our focus areas. And so, that is another way that we're trying to help pass down those stories. One thing that we've recognized recently is with 132 living family members, not everybody has had the chance to... they didn't know RT and Dorothy.

A lot of the third generation… or, excuse me, the younger third generation, didn't know them very well. And especially the fourth generation. They're just so little right now. And so, we're trying to really think through that and try to pass on those stories. And so, something else that the board started doing, I think about a year or two ago is at the beginning of each board meeting, they take turns and someone starts the meeting with a prayer. Obviously, faith is very important to our family and the foundation. So, they start it with a prayer and then they follow it up... someone shares a story of Dorothy or RT just because we have two non-family member board seats on the board. And so, just trying to really educate and just share those memories and those stories, I think it helps instill the values even deeper than what they already are.

Tony Macklin:  Jean, anything else on the storytelling aspect or how you sort of actively pass purpose down?

Jean Buckley:  Well, yeah. Another thing we did a few years ago was we created a book called the ABC of the Tracy Family. And it's a little children's story book and it's like A is for airplane because dad and one of my brothers fly airplanes, but dad always flew an airplane. That's how I used to get from point A to point B when they were starting the business. And so it goes through the entire alphabet and has something that's relative about mom and dad, the business, the foundation from A to Z. And that's been really a cute little... I think a cute little way to share the values with the kids in an appropriate way that they can understand. Like Megan said, her oldest is five, you got to have some little tools.

Tony Macklin:  That's amazing. That's great. And for those you in the audience, a couple of folks sent questions in ahead of time. You're picking up tips that really, you can find lots of ways to engage even kids as young as five or six. They're super intuitive of where things are not fair or something's amiss in the world around them. And they ask questions. You can draw that out of them, even if it's not the same language as the family finds. And as they get older, you keep returning to that and letting them tune into the family's language around it and giving them the stories through video and books and everything else makes a lot of sense. So, lots of good tips already. I'm going to put up a couple more tips for families, as you're thinking about developing your own family's purpose and mission statements and everything.

So, as a family, you may want to think about being more inclusive than less in this process than you heard from Jean and Megan. They cast wide nets to at least listen to everybody on values and purpose and principles and passions, and try to then find the commonalities amongst them. So, it may seem weird to get younger people involved, but they'll have something in their minds that you can probably include along the way. It will usually take as Jean said, multiple conversations to get to some kind of defined values list, principles list, set of priorities, mission statement, whatever it is. And you should allow for that, because people need to sleep on it. Think about it, figure out how it lives within their own family's values, and then bring it back to the full family. You might want them to be thinking about it from a storytelling.

They may want to go and do some other kind of learning to bring it all back in. So, the guidebook and the roadmap give you some checklists, but it's good to give them some breathing room and let time pass before you sort of write anything down in more permanent ink, I guess. For most families, we talk about the families that are in third and fourth generations, they will share with you that you really should focus your family's philanthropic vehicle on the areas that you have the most shared interest. So, where can you find grants or investments that really do resonate with the shared family values or shared interests and push the stuff that is more controversial or doesn't fit those family interests into other budgets or other vehicles or the business is giving or something else. Sometimes people want to put it all in one place, and sometimes you just want to keep the core of what keeps the family together in this vehicle.

You'll find the right method for your family, that's from folks who are in their third and fourth generation. And then finally, even when you get this down and you heard this from Megan and Jean, what you have down, may be a living draft. You've set down a set of values. You've set down a mission statement. You've set down some priorities. But it's going to take a while to sort of see how does that actually compare with the applications you might be getting or opportunities you might find to make grants? How does that compare with the changing needs in the world? How does that compare when new generations come up and see the new opportunities in the world or new issues that arise like mental health or something? So, even if you've got it written down, even if it's published on the website, it doesn't mean it has to be a permanent document.

You can sort of use a living draft. It's more about holding tightly to the values and the ideas behind it. Maybe less tightly to the exact language along the way. For those of you who are advisors in the audience, I know we have a ton of Schwab Charitable and Schwab advisors, there are ways that you can use these guidebooks and roadmaps as you're talking with client families. So, it might be a way to kick off a 60-minute Zoom or in person session just to get them starting thinking about values and priorities in their philanthropy. Some advisors will take this into a client event and have multiple families work through a couple worksheets and get them chatting because they learn from each other about how they came to motivations or values or vision and mission statements.

Some people will do this through a day long retreat. That takes a lot of homework ahead of time and behind the scenes, because it'll be a quick pass through the materials and then they'll want to come back and do deeper dives later on, but you can use it to frame up a retreat or maybe quarterly family session, sort of a retreat broken up into bimonthly or quarterly basis. So, lots of ways that you can adapt these materials for clients and families can adapt them depending on their learning styles and how often they get together around things. We bring Megan and Fred and Jean back on and I'm curious as we sort of dive into this. So you made it, Jean and Megan, sound easy. Family came together, had values and principles and mission, but say a little bit more about what happens when somebody finds something doesn't feel like it fits the family's sort of core values and mission, or where were the times that they had some collision or conflict around the values and focus areas?

Jean Buckley:  Yeah, I can take that one, Tony. So first of all, we make it sound easy, but it does take a little time, just so everybody knows. So we purposely, as Megan talked about a little bit before, we purposely started out the foundation with two primary family giving programs that really satisfy individual family interest, and that really, really helps. You know, so that’s our Matching Grant Program and that's our Next Gen Grant program. And those don't have to fit within our focus areas. They just have to fit within the mission and the values. And so, that gives people a lot of leeway. So, it really helps to lead to very little conflict, quite honestly, because we can all rally... if people can have their individual family interests where they can write a personal check and then the foundation will match that.

But then we also have this pot of money that is basically, it's for our collective interest. And so, that has really stopped much conflict. Occasionally, we've had a couple different matching grants come up that we haven't approved, just because we did not feel like that was in keeping with the values, but talked to the people and they understood. They were very kind about it. So, now what we're doing when you think about as time marches on and how are we going to make sure that this whole approach stays in place? So now we are… before it just kind of happened, quite honestly. We had like 35% of the money was for individual, 65% for that collective pot. But now at the board level, we're now having discussions where we really want to figure out, designate a range of dollars, budget dollars, that are going to go for the individual interest and a range of dollars that are going to go for the larger, shared family purpose. So right now, we're trying to figure out what's appropriate in that range. And so, we're working on that right now.

Tony Macklin:  For those of you in the audience, it's really common for families, either through a donor-advised fund or family foundation or their charitable vehicle, to have these kind of multiple pots or multiple budgets. Either they have it all under one vehicle, or they have it under separate vehicles. This kind of give and take of the family central mission and purpose and priorities, and then where you can get other family members to engage in their hometowns or their home interests or with Matching Grant Program, or some other kinds of ways. And so, you've done a nice job of balancing those, both personal passion, as well as family passion.

Jean Buckley:  Right.

Tony Macklin:  And, Megan, tell me a little bit about how you're seeing these kind of shared purposes and values show up in the family beyond the Family Foundation. Are people living these out in their own volunteering or in group volunteering or activism, where else does it pop up besides sort of money out the door?

Megan Costigan:  Yeah, so part of our mission is to cultivate the philanthropic spirit in all generations of the Robert and Dorothy Tracy family. And so, we really try to think through that in all aspects and try to educate the family so that they can successfully… or be set up to be successful in other areas and through their volunteer and philanthropic work in their own communities. So we as a family, we send lots of communication just on updates on our work, and we have various opportunities for family members to get involved. So, it's almost like you hear some foundations talk about it as a menu card. And so its different opportunities at different levels of commitment. It fits people at different stages of their life. And so, there are opportunities on our board. There're committees. We have the Next Generation advisory board, the family grant programs that we've talked about. We have a Next Gen meeting. We have Servember... there's a lot of different things. And there's just a few examples I'll talk about.

So, you'll see that our individual giving, it continues to increase each year, both in dollars and individuals who are actually donating. In 2021 through the Matching Grant Program, family members personally donated just under $850,000. And then that increased to just over $1.7 million when you added in the TFF matching dollars. And we've been fortunate. We have great participation typically each year. And so, in 2021, we had 100% 2G participation and 70% 3G participation. Another thing that we do, is we call it Servember. It's our annual family volunteer month, which was started in 2018. So, it's throughout the month of November. We just encourage family members to get out in their own communities and volunteer and give back. Since we started the program, we've averaged about 73 participation rate in all generations. And it's really just a way to get out in your community. We've turned it into a... our family's very competitive, and so we turned it into a friendly competition, which everybody gets really excited and has really enjoyed that process. And there's a lot of... go ahead.

Tony Macklin:  Just a quick interjection there, because people have been asking, how old are the volunteers? Is it sort of multi-generation or mostly adults and teens?

Megan Costigan:  It's multi-generation. I would say it depends on the activity that you're going out and doing in your community, but the young fourth generation, four or five is probably the youngest. I've taken my... I think my daughter was three when I took her to a food pantry. She didn't provide a lot of help, she was probably more work than help, but we take them and get them exposed. And we just take them year after year and it just becomes part of their nature. And then we have a lot of 2Gs and 3Gs that are on various nonprofit boards and junior boards in their own communities. We also do... one of my uncles recently… Alzheimer's Association is really near and dear to all of our hearts.

That's what my grandfather passed away of. And so, we have one of Dot Food's Charitable or corporate giving campaigns, one of them is the Alzheimer's Association. And so Dot, through their charitable giving has raised a significant amount of money since they started that in 2015. And then one of the 2Gs raised an additional $5 million recently, to help fund Alzheimer's research. And so, that's something that he's very passionate about and recruited people to get on board, to help with that fundraising. So, you see people... they find their passions and everybody goes about it in slightly different ways, but there are opportunities for everybody, no matter what you're looking for, you just have to look for it.

Tony Macklin:  This is for those in the audience. It's a terrific practice in family donor-advised funds or family foundations. There's a chance to use this vehicle as a launchpad for larger ways the family could make a difference. And Megan, if you're going to talk about it, it's a menu of opportunities for them to weigh in on. So, maybe they don't want to attend an annual grant meeting, but maybe they can volunteer for something, or maybe they don't have the time to do X, but they can do Y or maybe they want to raise money on the side for something that's very similar. So, it's a way to help the family members find their pathway into family philanthropy and something that sort of hits them where their hearts are and then connects their hearts to the family's larger purpose. Fred, you've been seeing other families facilitate these kind of processes. What other kind of tips are you seeing for families?

Fred Kaynor:  First of all, I just want to go back, Megan, to you and say, your three-year-old daughter may not necessarily have added a lot of value in terms of her efforts, but I'll bet the entertainment value was topnotch. So, I'm sure she added value, albeit in a different way.

Megan Costigan:  She did.

Fred Kaynor:  Yeah, I'm sure she did. So, to your question, Tony, it's important, I think, based on what we see and what we see in terms of the practices of our donors. It's really important understanding that they want to do sort of a joint effort around philanthropy. It's also really important to create room for both joint family giving and for giving with individual family members. And we work with a donor, for example, at Schwab Charitable, who has really embraced a true best practice, at least we found. Something that worked really well for her and her family and ultimately, it's something that's been embraced by multiple donors. This particular donor is named Teresa and she and her family have an annual tradition that involves the whole family in giving through their Schwab charitable account. So, every year prior to Christmas, each of the family members of Teresa's family is allocated an amount to grant from the account to their charity of choice.

And each family member recommends charities to receive the funds based on their particular and personal values and experiences or passions that have arisen throughout the year. And on Christmas day, prior to opening any presents, they talk about their choices and explain why they selected these charities. And then the families typically include in these discussions, younger children, and the tradition emphasizes the idea that to help someone else, is a gift for them as well, if you will. So, everybody's involved. All generations are a part of it, even I would dare say, Megan, three-year-olds. And what ultimately results in the final analysis is a really robust, engaged, powerful, and positive experience. So, that's a perfect example of what we've seen, embracing a tradition during the holidays, for example, by one of our donors.

Tony Macklin:  Very common solution if folks haven't tried it…

Jean Buckley:  A beautiful story.

Tony Macklin:  Go ahead, Jean.

Jean Buckley:  No, that is a beautiful story.

Fred Kaynor:  Isn't that fun? It really is very powerful.

Jean Buckley:  Yeah. It's really neat. I would just add with what Fred said, it doesn't matter if you have a family foundation or if you have a donor-advised fund or whatever, you still need to talk about your values, whatever rules you're going to come up with. It's all very appropriate. And Megan spoke a lot about... we start so early with our children or the grandkids because at age five, we want it to be in their DNA. We want this just to be, this is just what they do. They give back. And so, starting young, I think is really important.

Tony Macklin:  Jean, a couple questions related to giving style from the audience, I think, fit really well. So, we skipped by this issue of lifespan. Talk about how you, at least when the foundation was formed, did you think about perpetuity versus limited lifespan and has that sort of lifespan be revisited over time?

Jean Buckley:  Yeah, as long as Dot continues to be successful and Dot continues to fund us at this point in time, we plan to go on forever and ever. And at some point, quite honestly, family contributions from estate planning when my generation starts to pass away, that might even provide more income to the foundation than what Dot does at this point in time. So, we plan to exist in perpetuity and that's our hope and dream.

Tony Macklin:  Tell me if you're willing, does a family talk about having family members contribute to the foundation either during lifetime or in their estate plans, or is that just something people sort of do on their own?

Jean Buckley:  At this point in time, mom, when she passed away, she left money in her estate to the foundation, but my generation or the third generation family members, they are not giving money to the foundation at this point in time. Now, a lot of them have identified... we just did a survey. Megan said, we love surveys. We just did a family philanthropic survey and found a lot of family members have shared that, yes, the foundation is noted in our estate planning. And so some dollars will be left to the foundation. So, if somebody wanted to give us money right now, they sure could. But at this point in time, it's really funded basically investments, it's Dot Foods. And then like I said, moms estate planning, is pretty much what's occurred at this point in time.

Tony Macklin:  So, if Fred and I get our checkbooks out, you're okay with that.

Jean Buckley:  Yeah. We're fine. Yeah. We can figure out a way to accept that very easily.

Fred Kaynor:  I'm in.

Tony Macklin:  Although Fred would chide me for saying checkbooks, we should be giving the appreciated stock and things like that.

Fred Kaynor:  No, no, that's fine. Checks, it's a worthy cause. We can consider all options.

Jean Buckley:  Yeah, and I should point out, Tony, with your question, too, three family members in the second generation, so my brothers and their wives, they have their own private foundations. 19 family members have donor-advised funds in the second and the third generation. Everybody does check writing. So there's lots of philanthropic vehicles out there. They do some of their giving through our Matching Grant Program. Some of their giving basically flows through that, but a lot of family members do giving above and beyond that.

Tony Macklin:  And this is a great conversation for those of you in the audience to have with your advisors. It's one thing to set up a donor-advised fund or foundation that lasts for a while. But if people don't have that sort of stake in the game around it, or they don't feel very well connected, and Megan has given you a dozen or more good ideas on how to connect family members. It's also the idea of we encourage you also to keep this thing alive by contributing additionally to it.

As you get more and more generations added to it, you have more and more people trying to be involved. And so, it's nice to get people to think about, "Yeah, I actually want to do something similar, whether it's in this central foundation or a side car foundation or donor-advised fund." So keep that spirit of giving alive for people. They think the longer term about it and think how they can deploy their own family business assets or their own personal assets in a charitable giving along the time. Holy smokes, we are about out of time. Jean or Megan, any last thoughts you want to share about other families as they think about creating their own values and purpose statements?

Jean Buckley:  I would say that what has been really important in our family. And I think is important for all families actually and especially, when you're starting out in your journey is to make sure all the voices are heard. So, make sure that the 2Gs have a voice, make sure that the 3Gs have a voice whether it be in the values, whether it be in the focus areas or whatever, just really important for people to be heard. So, I think if you're starting out in your journey, that could be one big lesson, I would share with people. Megan, you probably have something as well.

Megan Costigan:  I agree. I would share really understand why you're doing this. So, really think through... kind of goes back to your values almost, but just understand and have the conversation of why. That's something that we are constantly asking ourselves. And I think it really helps us make decisions along the way.

Tony Macklin:  Great. Jean and Megan, thank you so much for spending time and prepping for this. Your story is so instructive for other families and chock-full of things. Folks, you can find the Tracy Family Foundation's website online, and get a chance to dive into what they've been doing over the many years and how it connects with the family's business and everything else. We've got a few things coming up, I want to let you know about and then turn things over to Fred to end the webinar. So stay tuned. You'll receive later on, an email with a recording and transcript and links again, to the documents and more information.

You can also go to schwabcharitable.org/family-philanthropy, and you'll find today's guidebooks and guidebooks for the next topic, Choosing Philanthropic Vehicles. You will also receive emails from Schwab and NCFP when we get the dates set for the next recordings. And so, you'll see similar webinars with family stories about choosing philanthropic vehicles, developing a social impact strategy, strengthening governance and family dynamics and planning for legacy and succession. And you already heard hints from Jean and Megan about all of those topics. I know the Schwab Charitable team will also be taking a look at the questions we couldn't get to, and trying to get responses out to folks where they can get a chance to find you all in their network. So Fred, do you want to say a little bit more about your network of charitable consultants who can be helpful?

Fred Kaynor:  I do. I do. And first of all, I want to say also to Jean and Megan, thank you so much. It's not only instructive as Tony says, it's inspirational what you do and how you have made it an obvious multi-generational priority to engage in really thoughtful, deliberate philanthropy and charitable giving. It's really inspirational. So, thank you both so much for your time and for leading the conversation. Tony, to your point, we have a number of different individuals on the team, our charitable consultants, who are here to really provide you with any information that would be helpful to you as you really think about the process for embracing family philanthropy as a priority.

They are very smart, seasoned people who have been working in the philanthropic sector for many years. They understand all of the resources that we can bring to bear to help with that process. I would encourage you… this slide is up here on screen now with a list of those charitable consultants. To Tony's point, we also did receive, and we thank you for your questions or input, and we will make sure that each and every one of those questions are answered by the appropriate person on our team. So, with that, listen, Tony, Megan, and everybody, thank you so much for being a part of this really wonderful opportunity to speak with you about family philanthropy. Jean, your leadership is inspirational and we are grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today. So thank you so much.

Tony Macklin:  Take care everyone. That concludes our webinar. Go out there and do great work in your communities and talk to your advisors if you need some help.