Design Fundamentals for Meaningful Giving: Putting It All Together With Your Design Thesis

Drafting Your Design Thesis for Meaningful Giving

The final step in the process of applying the 10 design fundamentals for meaningful giving to your own philanthropy  is to draft a design thesis that incorporates the most salient considerations you have surfaced throughout these exercises.

Here’s a sample design thesis for a couple in their late forties. Their goal is to spend down their philanthropic assets within their own lifetimes. They have decided not to involve their children, and they are using a private foundation alongside a donor-advised fund in which they have already vested their philanthropic assets.

How might we double the volume of our giving to $6 million per year, moving beyond the large institutions we know and are personally involved with in our home community? And how could we do so spending no more than one hour per week on our giving while still having confidence that we are creating substantial positive impact advancing racial equity and economic opportunity in a neighboring state where our family has its roots?

What’s your current best thinking about the key factors you want to incorporate in your giving?   Make a try at capturing these in the form of a design question: How might I/we…

Pulling everything together in this form is helpful because of how it encapsulates your key design considerations while also giving you permission to continue ideating and experimenting as you move forward. You don’t have to answer this design question all at once, but the clearer you are about what is most important for creating joy and impact with your giving, the more likely you are to succeed.