Isaac, 47, is a third-generation family business owner in Northern Kentucky and avoided the pitfalls of going shirtsleeves to shirtless. The family business reported a 12% revenue increase in FY24, Isaac’s younger brother and sister are not involved with the business or local, but his oldest son is getting ready to start college and independently told Isaac that he wants to join the family enterprise. Isaac and I started to work together in 2023, primarily helping with the grantmaking of his corporate philanthropy and serving as a charitable broker for his family’s personal philanthropy. The scope of our work was static, yet I was pleased with the progress we had made over the first year of working together in helping him move along the philanthropic learning curve.

Over the following months, something changed, and Isaac began to share more about his family story and what it meant to him. He spoke with deep admiration about his grandmother, who sacrificed greatly to keep the business afloat in its earliest days and whose values of perseverance, generosity, and faith were becoming more important to him as his daughter got older. Together, we designed a process for Isaac to capture and retell that origin story in ways his children could relate to—through written reflections, a recorded family interview, and eventually a family gathering with extended family where her story was shared and memorialized.

At the same time, Isaac and I began exploring how to translate her values and his family’s priorities into lived traditions. We designed a new annual family event and structured quarterly family meetings to discuss family goals, community projects, and long-term interests. After a series of conversations, I introduced the family to a local nonprofit whose mission focuses on supporting young parents to honor his grandmother’s legacy and journey of resilience and found a charitable giving plan that fits with their goals and vision for making a philanthropic impact.

Ed, 54, and his wife approached Queen City Impact for assistance in developing a new family philanthropy strategy for their family foundation. Ed’s family has an impactful philanthropic legacy in Cincinnati and Ed himself is a successful estate planner whose personal philanthropy is also significant. Ed’s motivation for a new strategy is somewhat personal, as he feels overshadowed by the family name and the multi-generational presence of the foundation.

After receiving approval from the foundation’s Board of Trustees, QCI conducted a series of family meetings with three generations of the family, 14 members in all. The meetings were structured so that private feelings could be shared in one-on-one settings, family issues shared in small groups, and legacy concerns discussed as a group. Shared values, common interests, and charitable goals were identified, deliberated, and agreed upon.

I synthesized the key takeaways from these discussions and put them into a report with follow up items for the family to complete independently. Outlined were the framework and contents for a new family mission statement, core values, family philanthropy roadmap, charitable giving purpose statement, and legacy enrichment activity. The family has drafted a new mission statement, and I am currently working with Ed on implementation strategies for blending the motivations and recipients of his personal giving into the family foundation’s legacy.

Oscar, 72, is a retired corporate executive in Cincinnati with $20 million in investable assets, a rolodex full of friends with even bigger portfolios, and a wealth of experience in strategic planning and organizational development. Before working with Queen City Impact, Oscar’s experience with charitable giving involved donations to friends and family who asked, always wanting to help but never giving much thought behind it. After retiring, he sought a more hands-on approach to philanthropy, and initially asked QCI to help him start his own 501c3.

I told Oscar this was a bad idea, and he protested for 6 months. At our next meeting, I asked him to tell me more about why he thought this was what he wanted. We talked about his upbringing, what and who he attributes his success to, the experiences that shaped him, the values that are important to his family, and where he sees things not being what they used to be. I focused on our shared belief in the dignity of work and importance of fatherhood to introduce two organizations that I know are doing innovative and impactful work in those areas.

After meeting with the leaders of these organizations, Oscar and I came up with a new plan for his personal philanthropy that used his business expertise, fundraising savviness, and desire to build relationships with people. He now serves as an unpaid advisor to the CEO of one organization and joined the development committee of another agency, hosts a roundtable dinner at his home with fellow philanthropists, and is now beginning to have conversations with his own children about his philanthropy and the ‘why’ behind leaving half of his assets to the organizations he is working with.