Philanthropists Increasingly Turn to Family Offices to Manage Giving

Trend parallels growth of ultra high-net-worth earners

“Financial planning on steroids.”

That’s how one industry insider explains the family office, an institution whose nondescript name belies its complexity and the critical role it plays in moving the wealth of the ultra rich.

While the concept isn’t new,—John D. Rockefeller Sr. established the first family office in 1882—the rapid proliferation of family offices in recent times has attracted notice. Financial services network Deloitte estimated that, of the world’s approximately 8,030 family offices active in 2024, 68% had been established this century—with much of that growth occurring after 2019.

Today, these private entities manage as much as $10 trillion of the world’s wealth. This also means that, for better or worse, the landscape of philanthropic giving—including the funding of Christian missions—has increasingly been absorbed into the family office ecosystem.

What is a family office?

“If you know one family office, you know one family office. The differences between them are vast,” said Nathan Staub, managing partner of philanthropic consulting firm Calvin Edwards & Company (CEC), which operates under the umbrella of Christian financial services provider Blue Trust.

At their core, though, all family offices share a primary function—professional management of a high-net-worth family’s assets.

Rather than turn to a financial advisor, a family that has amassed a large fortune and is juggling complex needs may opt to hire its own staff of experts to manage its wealth. The family office can include accountants, attorneys, investment professionals, philanthropic advisors and even lifestyle managers, and it can play a crucial role in maintaining a family’s legacy from one generation to the next. A traditional family office is extremely expensive to maintain, which is why industry experts currently recommend a bottom threshold of $250 million net worth.

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“A family office comes out of the need to manage money and lifestyle,” Staub told MinistryWatch. “So those would be the two buckets. Often when a family sells a business, we would tell them, ‘You’re selling the business but you’re entering into a new business, and that new business is an investment business where you are managing money.’”

A traditional family office serves a single family, while a multi-family office makes it possible for families with assets as low as $25 million to access a similar level of service by pooling resources.

Some family offices can be structured as holding companies. For example, Kingdom Brands Group, which backed the faith-based “Redemption” docuseries about Ohio State’s victorious 2024 football season, describes itself as “a family office and holding company founded by Matthew and Marlee Benson.”

Why are family offices multiplying?

Writing in FT Adviser, multi-family office PCM Encore founder Mike Paulus calls family offices “one of the fastest growing forces in wealth management” and points to the model’s unique advantages. These include tax optimization, fewer time constraints on investments, and the ability to tie managers’ compensation more directly to performance.

Fortune Magazine ties the proliferation of family offices to the increase in the number of ultra-net-worth families around the world. It also notes how the 2009 financial crisis pushed the wealthy to move away from banks and Wall Street and toward more private options—an effort facilitated by technology that shattered Wall Street’s monopoly on financial knowledge.

For Staub, the explosive growth he has seen in the software industry has played a role in the vast wealth accumulation that has multiplied the need for family offices.

“You build a product once and you sell it over and over again,” Staub said. “That, along with generational wealth transfer, has contributed to the rise we see.”

While young wealth creators are driving some of this growth and changing what a family office looks like, experts are also talking about the Great Wealth Transfer—the passing of an estimated $124 trillion from the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers to their descendants. A family office can smooth these transitions, ease tensions among family members, and educate the next generation on financial management and maintaining the family legacy.

The philanthropic impact

How prevalent are family offices among the largest Christian philanthropists?

Staub says the number is substantial.

“I would imagine most of the ultra high-net-worth families in the Christian giving space have family offices, through a multi-family office setup at a financial institution like Blue Trust or through their own single family office,” Staub said.

Rather than invest directly in Christian ministries, family offices oversee charitable foundations. For example, the Gorski Family Office governs the Gorski Foundation, a group that describes itself as “focused on supporting evangelical domestic and evangelical organizations that transform communities through faith and service.” Its beneficiaries include, among others, Calvary Chapel of Ellicott City, TeenBlast urban youth program, and Be Love, a ministry to Latin American women.

“The degree to which a family office is intermingled with a family foundation is pretty varied,” Staub said, noting that, in his opinion, the family office model does not fundamentally change how Christians  make giving decisions.

Staub has, however, observed a growing demand among wealthy benefactors for impact data.

“There is an increasing insistence in the donor community for analysis and quantitative measures of success,” Staub said. “Christian philanthropists want to understand the impact of their giving. When CEC started 25 years ago, it was a kind of niche product for the few that wanted analysis. But it’s slowly grown. That’s a change especially in the past five or 10 years.”

That shift, he believes, stems from philanthropists’ frustrations with failing to produce long-term results. He also points to a cultural loss of trust in institutions and erosion of community ties. “Informal trust networks people used to rely on have receded a bit,” Staub said.

Both inside and outside evangelical circles, family offices have enormous potential to address social issues. Family offices “will fundamentally change how many of the real world problems that we face are cured,” said Ronald Diamond, founder of a syndicate of over 100 family offices, in a 2023 TEDx Talk presentation.

“If you look at it through the lens of climate or through the lens of Parkinson’s or through the lens of prostate cancer or poverty or whatever your issue is, in my opinion it’s not necessarily going to come from the government, probably not going to come from the corporate sector. It’s the family offices that are going to solve a lot of these problems,” Diamond said. “Think about the generation that’s going to inherit the money, that’s going to try to solve these real world problems.”

A recent trend among younger generations has been to consider social impact not just in terms of charitable giving but also in evaluating for-profit investments. Family Wealth Report noted that even as investors have shown a “dramatic shift away” from the recent Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) fad, they continue to value sustainability, particularly in education, microfinance and renewable energy.

Family offices play a critical role in managing those generational differences. A 2024 Morgan Stanley report encouraged flexible structures to balance a family’s legacy with shifts in attitudes about money and philanthropy.

“Families are not static institutions, and the operating environment is constantly changing, so family offices must evolve to remain viable and relevant,” the report said. “Forward-thinking family offices start by identifying their purpose and then, with rigor and intent, developing the structure, team and policies that will allow it to be an indispensable partner to the family for generations to come.”

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