Family Philanthropy

Working with your family can be a rich and rewarding way to fulfill your philanthropic goals.

MCF encourages our donors to include family in aspects of their philanthropy as early and as often as possible. We also recognize while this may sound appealing to some, it will be daunting to others, even if everyone understands the benefits.

Regardless of the ages of your kids, MCF can help facilitate conversations individually or as a family. Our goal is for family members to discover together where their mutual interests may lie or where their interests may be different. We aim to help parents pass on to their children the values of generosity, compassion, community, and gratitude and for parents to enjoy watching their children embrace, or in some cases grapple with these values.

Giving together can be an experience that exposes younger people to the greater world around them – and to people with needs and challenges they might not be aware of or have experienced in their own lives. Through MCF’s research and resources, site visits, meetings with staff and self-guided exercises, MCF provides a variety of methods to meet the needs of busy families.

Family philanthropy is a way to create a giving culture that can last for generations. It can also be fun, surprising and highly rewarding.

With that in mind, for our donors we have developed a family philanthropy curriculum, aimed to engage the next generation and to facilitate meaningful and enjoyable conversations within the family. We have designed it to allow discovery, inspiration and, hopefully, revelation.

Your MCF senior philanthropic advisor is well-versed in the best way to introduce this to your family and is available to be as involved in the process as you desire.


For information about opening a fund, please contact

Henderson andrea linkedin
Andrea Henderson

Senior Director of Planning

415.464.2507
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