Forward Together: How Philanthropic Families Can Create Impact Across Generations

The coming decades are likely to transform the philanthropic landscape as new wealth, priorities, and approaches reshape how families pursue their giving—and as younger generations inherit immense wealth created by entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders who came before them. This rising generation of philanthropists is reimagining what philanthropy can look like and what it can achieve. 

Forward Together: How Philanthropic Families Can Create Impact Across Generations is designed to help families navigate this transformation, articulate their goals, and overcome common challenges. The report synthesizes insights the Milken Institute gathered from 34 deep-dive interviews with rising-generation philanthropists and philanthropic advisors.

It presents four imperatives for successful multigenerational giving strategies: 

1. Engage early and authentically. Empowering the rising generation to embrace and help lead a family’s philanthropic efforts involves early engagement and authentic communication. 

2. Make the implicit explicit. Families can avoid misunderstandings by increasing transparency and developing clear, formal policies about who is invited into the decision-making process and what authority they have. 

3. Align on the “how.” As the rising generation inherits wealth, its members are more open to giving mechanisms beyond grantmaking, more likely to pursue different organizational structures, and more eager to experiment with approaches such as trust-based philanthropy.   

4. Don’t go it alone. Navigating family dynamics and defining a philanthropic vision and strategy can be daunting. External philanthropic advisors can help guide families through essential questions that will shape their giving. 

Guided by the hard-won lessons and values of the established generation, the rising generation holds tremendous promise, not only to strengthen the family legacy but also to deliver lasting impact for the communities and causes that benefit from its generosity, creativity, and long-term commitment. The report offers practical recommendations and tools for anyone in a family seeking to navigate the challenges—and maximize the impact—of multigenerational philanthropy.