Cyndi Chiaro is general counsel of Miramar Services, Inc., the family office serving descendants of Edward W. Scripps, a newspaper publisher who founded a media empire based in Cleveland in 1878. She talks about family education, engagement and philanthropy:
How has the family office’s approach to family education changed during the years you have been there?
When I started 14 years ago, the office was very small. For a very long time, because of trust termination, we focused on financial assets — investing and wealth transfer planning. There wasn’t much room left to focus on aspects of human capital, including education.
A few years ago, we observed a shift in the family office space that seemed to coincide with the family’s timeline: People started to focus more intensely on the overall well-being of those inheriting wealth — not just the financial assets.
Now the goal is to help family members be wealthy — where the meaning of ‘wealth’ is not confined to financial assets. It means that our clients are doing well in personal aspects of life as well. This evolution has shifted our focus in the family office to education and the human side of our clients.
It has been a three- or four-year journey so far. We have moved slowly because we want to stay in harmony with the family’s wants and needs. We want to help them find their own connection between purpose and wealth.
At this point, we are starting conversations with all family members. We reinforce the importance of helping a person discover what is most important to them — their passion.
How are you working to help family members find their passion?
Our office recently completed training from a nonprofit that helps families with multigenerational engagement. They evolved from a focus on philanthropic organizations to their current program that also includes family offices and family enterprises.
Over the years, our clients have come to know and trust us, and this new focus has deepened our relationships. The new learning tools help us do a deep dive into what people are feeling and thinking and what they want.
What sort of philanthropic activity does the family office handle?
The family has always been very philanthropic, and our clients are keenly aware of the legacy of generosity they inherited.
We created a family advised fund, like a donor advised fund, where family members can open an account to handle their personal giving. We also administer large foundations, including one for the estate plan of a G4 who sadly passed away in 2019.
Some of the younger folks, G5s and G6s, are involved in one of the family’s other philanthropic efforts, a giving circle that was the brainchild of a G5 family leader and his wife. The group picks a giving area each year, such as childhood literacy, animals or veterans and first responders. They then identify charitable organizations in that area, perform due diligence and invite select nonprofits to apply. The entire family contributes to the fund, and they select three organizations to receive grants. This is a grassroots effort started by the family, but it has given away almost $10 million in the first six years.
How do you use philanthropy to promote NextGen engagement?
It has evolved.
For many years, we have had a teen program at the annual family reunion. It’s a multi-day workshop for teens where they engage in a variety of activities that are fun and build relationships but also help them — in a not so apparent way — figure out what they care about. One way they learn: They get to pick a charity that’s aligned with their giving circle’s focus each year, and they do a commercial or pitch on why they think this charity should receive a grant.
How and why has your engagement with family members become more individualized over the years?
We are more than 12 years past trust termination, and things have become more individualized in many ways. You’ve got spenders. You’ve got savers. You’ve got folks who want to leave a fixed amount to their kids. Folks who want to leave as much as possible to their kids. People who want to spend what they have and folks who want to leave it all to charity. We have the full spectrum.
So, in recognition of this diversity, our engagements are purposefully tailored. And this is one of the areas where we work directly with the clients to help them determine what their personal goals are for the year (or longer) and develop a roadmap to help them meet those goals.
What other changes are you making to your family engagement efforts?
We try to meet with each of our clients in person at least once a year. We have a robust client service team, and the relationship managers travel extensively. Previously, these in-person meetings were dedicated to financial topics such as investment returns, spending rate, cash flow, estate plans.
But now we have other tools. We have signaled to our clients that they are going to notice a shift. We are going to ask them questions about themselves, their kids, their grandkids. What do you want for them? What do you want for yourself? These are always very enlightening conversations, but it’s a place that we have never directly gone before. We use a variety of tools that help spur conversations.
The way I look at it, we have been building capital in the form of relationships with our clients for a very long time. Now it’s time to use the capital we’ve built to try to take it further — to establish an education baseline for each client, so that when kids and grandkids inherit money, they are much better situated.
What do you see in the future of your family education program?
More than 18 months ago, we created something called Pillars of Success. We sorted our clients into three groups — rising gen, next gen and gen forward — along with four focus areas for each group: financial literacy, leadership, relationships and family culture/legacy — which is very rich with a lot of wonderful stories. Based on client feedback, we will incorporate topics from these areas into future client meetings.
