What difference will you make in the world?

Substancial financial wealth, whether created or inherited, has the capacity to transform the wealth holder. Many wealthy individuals rethink the meaning of their money, indeed their lives, in light of the freedom and empowerment their wealth provides them. In the lives of the wealthy, there is often an existential shift, often more an inner journey than outward accomplishment. Consciously, they explore their options, and in this transitional work they go through a stage of development in regard to their wealth.

There is an idea that values are divided between the financial and the societal, but this is a fundamentally wrong way to view how we create value. Value is whole.

Philanthropy is a matter of giving - of yourself as much as your money. And the more you give, the more you stand to get back - not in money, but in more spiritual forms of value. Connection. Purpose. Meaning. 

Philanthropy can act as an integrating force that is fulfilling precisely because it is so full of such diverse, and yet essential, elements.

It is extremely important to help families develop rituals that correspond to the actual transitions of their lives, including those transitions that the culture has not validated. The powerful implications of family life cycle celebration; rituals that have been designed by families in every culture to ease the passage of its members from one status to the next, allow the system to unlock during the time just before and after such events. As a result it is often possible to shift things with less effort during these intensive period than could ordinarily be expended in years of struggle.

Today’s philanthropists are going to transfer legacies of meaning as well as financial wealth, whether they think about it or not.