National Center for Family Philanthropy (NCFP)

The National Center for Family Philanthropy serves American philanthropic families and the professionals who work with them, through programmes, research and a peer community focused on how families give well. It publishes its full fee schedule, which is rare enough in this directory to be worth the visit on its own.

Who joins

Five categories, and it is worth knowing which one you fall into before enquiring.

Philanthropic families giving through private foundations, donor-advised funds or single family offices form the core. Alongside them sit community foundations, philanthropy-serving organisations, consultants and advisers who support giving families, and financial institutions that work with them.

The badge on this listing marks it as an impact and philanthropy network. That is what it is: a family with no organised giving programme will find little use here, while one running a foundation will find this the most substantial peer resource in the United States.

How membership works

Family philanthropy membership starts at $1,000 a year for an organisation holding under $20 million in assets, and scales with size up to $10,000 or more for the Leadership Circle tier covering foundations above $250 million.

Scaling dues to assets is a fairer structure than most and means a modest family foundation is not priced out by the same fee a large one pays. The other categories are flat: consultants and advisers pay $1,000 as solo practitioners or $2,500 as firms, philanthropy-serving organisations pay $2,500, financial institutions pay $3,500, and community foundations pay $1,500 in the first year and $2,500 thereafter. Optional add-ons cover donor webinars and staff training.

What members get

Peer networks and learning cohorts, which are the parts members value most, since they put a family foundation trustee in regular contact with others facing the same governance questions. Webinars run through the year. Personalised support from NCFP staff is included rather than charged separately.

The resource library is unusually practical, built around the family giving lifecycle and including board self-assessment tools. For a family foundation whose board has never formally reviewed how it works, that material alone can justify the entry fee.

Members also receive priority invitations and discounts to the National Forum on Family Philanthropy, the organisation's main convening.

The combination of published scaled pricing, an entry tier at $1,000 and material aimed at governance rather than grantmaking mechanics makes this one of the easiest recommendations in this directory for an American family that gives seriously.