
Questions to Ask a DAF Sponsor Organization
Revised in Nov. 2020, a list of questions to assess DAF sponsors as you consider establishing or moving a Donor-Advised Fund.

Balancing Purpose, Payout, and Permanence: Strategy Guide
(2020) Strategy guide to help private foundations strengthen investment governance, understand the spectrum of options in payout, and develop spending rates based on purpose, conditions and trends, time horizon, and more.

Leadership in Difficult Times: Guidance for Donors and Giving Families
(2020, with Jason Born) Provides resources and inspiration for short-term responses to the COVID-19 and economic crises.

Community Foundation Family Philanthropy Playbook
(2019) Nine modules to help plan and deliver more sophisticated philanthropic services. Also useful for other community philanthropy organizations such as women’s funds and Jewish federations.

Community Foundation Family Philanthropy Readiness Self-Assessment
(2017) Online survey tool to help staff frame internal questions and decisions about offering services to multi-branch and multi-generation families.

Expanding Your Comfort Zone: A Window into Risk in Family Philanthropy
(2016) Issue Brief to help generous families and foundations assess philanthropic risk, tame and mitigate risk, and even expand their comfort zone to embrace uncertainty.

Risk in Philanthropy
Annotated graphic to accompany the Expanding Your Comfort Zone brief.
Advocacy and Public Policy – Philanthropy’s New Capital
Chapter in The Gift of Belief: Philanthropy and the forging of Pittsburgh, edited by Kathleen W. Buechel, to be published by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2021.

Melton Family Case Study
(2019) Two-part case study to help students and graduates of the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy program understand what happens after a wealth event and the start of a family foundation (not available to the public).

Resource Guide for Family Philanthropy
(2019) Resource guide to help students and graduates of the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy program understand client motivations for seeking philanthropic advice, types of advice and advisors, team roles, and more (not available to the public).

6 Grantmaking Models
(2018) Summary of choices funders can make in their portfolio of grantmaking programs.

Case Study: Navigating a Community Foundation’s Roles Among a Family’s Professional Advisors
(2017) Explores the questions, considerations, and challenges facing a community foundation as it works with a business-owning family’s team of trusted advisors.

21st Century Philathropy
(2015) My take on all the ways people are using their financial capital to make a difference.