Boston Group Takes the Initiative in Providing Resources to Charitable Donors

By MEG SOMMERFELD

H. Peter Karoff believes people need to be “motivated, educated, nudged, and supported” if they

are to reach their full potential as philanthropists.

That is why he and the Boston nonprofit group he heads — the Philanthropic Initiative — have spent the past 11 years developing a support system for new givers that uses a combination of educational seminars, research, and direct consulting.

Mr. Karoff estimates that some 8,000 wealthy people and their advisers have participated in donor seminars organized by the Philanthropic Initiative.

In October, for example, the group held one-day workshops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley titled “Strategic Philanthropy for the Venturesome Donor.”

The organization also experimented in March with using satellite technology to train donors simultaneously in Boston, Raleigh-Chapel Hill, Detroit, New York, and Seattle. Grant makers in each of the cities helped pay for the effort.

For donors who want more-personalized advice, the Philanthropic Initiative helps design detailed giving programs. It currently has about 80 clients, and it says that since its start in 1989 it has helped donors direct $80-million to charitable efforts.

But Mr. Karoff says demand for such services far outstrips the supply as the number of Americans who hold huge sums of money — either through stock gains or inherited wealth — continues to grow.

“Even though there’s lots of new, fledgling activities and a lot of buzz around new learning opportunities for donors,” says Mr. Karoff, “it still represents a cottage industry that’s trying to meet a huge demand that’s greater than anything we’ve seen before.”

‘What’s a Donor to Do?’

To measure that demand, as well as the donor-education efforts that currently exist to meet it, nine foundations asked the Philanthropic Initiative last year to research the topic. The report, titled “What’s A Donor to Do: The State of Donor Resources in America Today,” was published this fall (The Chronicle, September 7).

Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation, says major grant makers have started to express “a lot of interest in collaborating around some of the recommendations of the report.” The foundation plans to hold a meeting on donor education next May as part of the Council on Foundations’ annual meeting.

Plans are also in the works for a series of regional meetings, with the first scheduled for January in San Francisco, organized by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

And More Than Money — a nonprofit group in Arlington, Mass., that advises wealthy individuals — plans to organize a study group on the donor-education report. The group is dividing the report into thirds and will coordinate an e-mail discussion over the next three months. The group will also sponsor a face-to-face meeting next year in the Boston area.

Mr. Karoff says foundations, companies, financial advisers, and charities all have a role to play in helping donors move beyond a desire to simply support the colleges and hospitals that they know from personal experience.

With the right tools and guidance, he says, many new donors “may become receptive to something broader or bigger — or both.”