I think Jacob Harold was calling for more resources and education for “financial advisors, estate attorneys, wealth managers, and accountants,” not more vehicle neutrality among philanthropic types. And I agree with his point: These folks generally have no horse in the race, but often seem to have a comfort zone with one philanthropic vehicle or another. Ideally they should be helping clients make informed decisions based on their particular situation, not the advisors’ own confort zone.

Once donors get in the right vehicle, though, the philanthropic advisors should be able to play that concierge role to connect donors with the best resources to accomplish their philanthropic goals. It’s a full-time job to keep up with everything going on in the sector. I know–it’s mine.

I’ve never thought about any negative connotations. If any of the authors don’t like the vocabulary, I’d be happy to discuss.

But I think you’re talking about a non-issue here.

Is Jacob covering the conference “for” TP or “with” TP?

“Easy. Call Foundation Source.”
“Easy. Call Goldman Sachs.”
“Easy. Call Rockefeller Partners”
“Easy. Call Ensemble Capital”

Neither community foundations nor any of the above are a simple across the board answer to the issues raised in your post, Jacob.

Also, Ani, you are right when you say that community foundations real efforts are in helping their city (and that is how community foundations are so different from commercial gift funds). But Jacob’s post was about “serving donors”, not “serving the community”. The “product” or “service” that CFs “sell” to donors is donor advised fund administration (of course grantmaking advice is part of the bundled package, but it cannot be unbundled).

So when you combine that economic incentive with statements like yours that imply that your “competitor” (private foundations) are generally not appropriate, you can see why I question the ability of CFs to act as the “concierge” that Jacob refers to.

Now, lots of nuances can be lost in short blog comments, so I just want to circle around and point out that my comments here are not a sort of attack on CFs, but a reaction to your solution to the issues Jacob raises being, “easy. go to your local community foundation.”

In the interest of fair discloser, my firm is trying to serve as concierge in the way Jacob describes, so I’m clearly biased.