Is Your Philanthropic Partner Placing Values at the Center?

Here is a classic story. You are thinking through your philanthropy, and understandably you go to your wealth management team. Your financial advisor, your estate attorney, your CPA, or even your closest nonprofit development professional or community foundation. In the best case, you are big fans of your team and trust them completely.

So what is wrong?

No one is placing your values at the center. Your financial advisor is focused on building wealth. Your estate attorney and CPA are focused on mitigating taxes. Your nonprofit development professional or community foundation is aligned with their organizational goals. Who is advocating for your values and managing your philanthropic plan?

Usually, no one. Giving comes up as a tool to achieve another goal, not as the foundation for your legacy.

When the seat is filled, it is often filled by a professional with a different goal in mind. A fundraiser or a community foundation represents the donor’s values only insofar as they align with the nonprofit’s goals. Some financial advisors offer light philanthropic planning, which is useful but stops short of the full work: deep vetting, impact reporting, treating a philanthropic portfolio with the same rigor as a financial one. It is not fair to expect them to do all of that.

Scott and Todd Fithian’s book The Right Side of the Table reshaped how I think about my own seat. Their argument: every advisor sits on either the right side of the table, with the client as advocate, or the wrong side, across from the client representing an institution, a product, or a quota.

For philanthropy, the right side is structurally rare. Most people advising on giving have an affiliation. A community foundation. A financial firm with a charitable arm. A nonprofit hoping for the gift. The advice tilts, often unintentionally, toward what the institution behind the advisor needs.

Jonesing has zero nonprofit affiliations. We hold our clients’ values and their philanthropic plan at the center of decision making. Our fee is flat or retainer, never a percentage of the giving. That is what makes the seat possible. Advice can be tuned to the donor’s values rather than the institution’s interests. It sounds simple. In this field, it is rare.

The work is advisory, not operational. Much like a CPA does not manage your monthly budget, a philanthropic advisor does not execute a foundation’s grant disbursement operations, or an individual’s annual giving. A philanthropic advisor is a seat at the table, collaborating with a client’s wealth management team to support a holistic wealth and values strategy. After all, what is the point of accumulating wealth if it is not creating a lasting legacy that supports what truly matters (it is not as simple as supporting a client’s children).

What I do is reposition giving from reactive to intentional. I clarify values. I vet organizations against the donor’s actual goals. I bring nonprofit expertise into the planning conversation that has usually been missing. Then I get out of the way so the team can act. An integrated wealth plan is what clients actually want.

Echoing Fithian: the planning team works best when every seat is filled by someone whose only loyalty is to occupy it well.

Strategic philanthropy begins with values. That is the work we do at Jonesing for Good.

Reference: Scott Fithian and Todd Fithian, The Right Side of the Table: Where Do You Sit in the Minds of the Affluent? (FPA Press, 2007).

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