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Design Fundamentals for Meaningful Giving #8: When

Apr 10, 2023
 

 There are three key questions to work through about how your giving plays out over time

When do you plan to get started? Over how long a span of time do you intend to carry out your
giving? And how much time do you intend to spend on your giving relative to your other time
commitments? This post will help you consider each of these three questions of when more
deeply.

1. WHEN do you plan to take the next major step in your giving?

Following through on your intentions is trickier than it seems. There are many well-intentioned

would-be philanthropists whose money is still sitting on the sidelines years after they told
themselves it was time to gear up. Don’t fall into that trap of senseless giving! Audit your intentions
on timing:

  • Are there any external forces requiring that you act within a certain time frame?
  • Is there anyone else involved in deciding when to take action on your giving, or is it solely up to you
  • How consistently have you acted on your philanthropic intentions so far?
  • If you suspect that you might end up procrastinating, what can you do to strengthen your propensity to act? What already works for you in other areas of your life when you want to follow through on your intentions?

 

2. WHEN do you plan to spend your philanthropic capital?

Let’s start by considering the options you have when choosing the time frame of your giving:

  • Right away, ASAP: I want to go for broke and spend down as fast as I can
  • Within a defined period of years that is shorter than my own anticipated lifetime
  • Within my lifetime
  • Within a defined period following the end of my life
  • Perpetuity: I plan to establish an ongoing philanthropic vehicle
  • A hybrid option (e.g., a certain amount in the next ten years; an additional amount by the
    end of my lifetime; the rest spent in perpetuity through an ongoing philanthropic
    institution)

Let’s look at some of the factors you might consider in determining which of these time frames truly
makes the most sense for your giving.

Tax and financial planning considerations

Have you already established philanthropic vehicles that have specific, time-bound distribution
requirements or opportunities?

Are there any hard parameters that arise from your choice of giving vehicles, estate planning, or other tax
and financial planning decisions you have already made?

Nature of the issue you are seeking to address

Does the challenge you are focused on have a meaningful deadline? An example of this would be helping
more athletes from developing nations compete in the next Special Olympics.

Is there a possibility of a breakthrough solution in your arena of engagement such that the need for further
investment would diminish or go away entirely? An example of this would be research to cure a disease or
advocacy to enact a sweeping policy change. In this case, you might want to push hard for that
breakthrough as fast as possible.

Is the need in your arena of engagement evergreen? An example of this would be educating successive
generations of children within a particular cultural tradition. In this case, you might want to parcel out
your resources steadily over time or even in perpetuity.

Is your philanthropy aimed at reducing immediate suffering on an urgent basis, like providing relief aid
for victims of a natural disaster? If so, you’ll have a clear and compelling rationale that drives the timing of
your giving in response.

Family dynamics/intergenerational issues

How important is it to have philanthropy be a point of connection between successive generations of your
family?

How will you approach trade-offs between inclusion and alignment when it comes to having family
members involved in grantmaking decisions?

How will you approach trade-offs between maintaining family control of governance and having board
members with expertise and proximity on philanthropic priorities?

In light of all these potential considerations, what’s your best thinking about the time period over
which you want your giving to take place?

 

3. WHEN do you plan to fit philanthropy into your schedule?

It’s crucial to consider how much of your own time you are prepared to spend on your giving. Certain kinds of
giving, such as systemically oriented, strategic philanthropy are more time intensive than others, but there’s
no fixed amount of time you have to spend to give meaningfully. The answer is going to be specific to you and
your circumstances. Everything is valid, from a full-time, forty-plus-hours-per-week pursuit to setting aside
just an hour or two every few months, or even making a one-time decision to completely vest your
philanthropic resources with someone else.

A great way to get further insight into how much help you might need from others to carry out your giving
comes by charting out two lifelines: one for your annual philanthropic giving and one for the amount of time
you intend to spend on your giving from year to year. Begin by drawing a lifeline that shows your annual
giving from the present through to the end of your life. You can show the scale in dollar values if you want,
but the real point is the shape of the curve.

Next, chart out the amount of time you plan to spend on your giving each year from the present through the
end of your life.

As you look at these two lifelines side by side, how well do they match up? Are you planning to
match the time you spend on your giving in line with changes in the dollar amount of your giving?
Are you anticipating significant life transitions (sale of a business, retirement, leadership hand-offs
to a younger generation) that will impact your rate of giving and/or the amount of time you spend on
it? Go ahead and redraw the lines if there’s anything you want to change. Is there a clear point
where you will need to get help in order to carry out your giving as intended?

 

Download the worksheet

Check out the video, download the worksheet and stay tuned for the next segment in this series, where we'll look at how other people are involved in your giving with Design Fundamental #9: Who.

 

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