My firm, Ensemble Capital Management, was profiled in the San Francisco Business Times recently:

Drive your own charitable financial vehicle
Ensemble dangles keys to a private foundation
by Sarah Duxbury

You don’t have to be as rich as you used to if you want to be a philanthropist.

Before the Internet, establishing and running foundations was complicated and expensive and made little sense for those with a net worth under $50 million.

No longer.

Now people with $3 million invested can responsibly set up a private foundation; those with far less can set up donor advised funds or charitable remainder trusts. Yet, many people in that $50 million-and-under group don’t recognize their own potential to be philanthropists with dedicated charitable financial vehicles.

Ensemble Capital Management is staking its growth on the belief that many of these people balk more at the title than the largesse. The idea it’s selling, led by Sean Stannard-Stockton, is that failing to think like a philanthropist, and thinking only as a tax adviser, could actually shortchange the good the donor wants to do.

“Four years ago, we saw that our clients who had the very best retirement and tax planning and other advice knew very little about philanthropy,” Stannard-Stockton said. “We set out to integrate a traditional wealth management offering with service targeting people who give away over $50,000 a year. … Yes, you can stick your money in a savings account, but there are more sophisticated ways to do it, and the same is true for philanthropy.”

…Lots of people researching philanthropy online end up calling Ensemble with questions, finding the firm through Stannard-Stockton’s well-received blog, “Tactical Philanthropy,” or through the philanthropy column he writes for the Financial Times. Some of those callers choose to open accounts.

“Simply by educating the marketplace, we find that more people learn they themselves are in a position to start something, and they get really excited,” Stannard-Stockton said.

…Former San Francisco Giants owner Bob Lurie has had an account with Ensemble for about five years. Eighteen months ago, he and his wife decided to start a private foundation that would focus on children’s activities and education, something they had long wanted to do but were daunted by. Lurie had the experience of his father’s private foundation, set up decades earlier, which required all kinds of paperwork, tempering his enthusiasm to start his own.

“As I started investing with Ensemble, I heard about how they were so knowledgeable about foundations, and it was such a simple way to get started,” Lurie said.

…Ensemble also does what it calls philanthropic concierge work, connecting clients with philanthropic experts that Stannard-Stockton has gotten to know through his blog and other activities. For example, a Portland, Ore. cardiologist and client of Ensemble wanted to set up a cardiology institute. Stannard-Stockton helped get him a meeting with a senior executive at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Such service is good for business. Last year, revenue at the firm grew 30 percent.

You can read the full article here.