Purposeful Planning Institute (PPI)

The Purposeful Planning Institute builds collaboration between professional disciplines, supporting advisers and consultants who want to serve families in deeper ways than a single specialism allows. It is one of the few bodies in this directory that publishes its complete price list, including a free trial.

Who joins

Members come from more than twenty disciplines: estate planning lawyers, tax professionals, wealth managers, therapists, coaches, family business consultants, mediators and philanthropic advisers.

That list is the point of the organisation. A family in difficulty over succession rarely has a legal problem or a tax problem alone. It usually has a relationship problem with legal and tax consequences, and the professions that handle each part are trained separately and speak different languages. PPI exists to get them in the same room.

The badge on this listing marks it as an advisers and professionals body. Families do not join, but they feel the effect if their advisers do.

How membership works

Individual membership is $750 a year or $75 a month. Group seats run at $1,800 for three, $2,888 for five and $5,550 for ten. A free 30-day trial is offered, which for an organisation whose value is hard to judge from outside is a sensible thing to provide and a sensible thing to use.

What members get

Live and archived educational webinars form the core, alongside a private online community for discussing ideas, questions and how a practice is developing. The Connecting Point is a professional directory, and the Purposeful Planning Resource Center holds practice tools and materials to use with clients.

Members also get early invitations and discounts of at least 20% on the institute's programmes, including Rendezvous, its main annual event, which gathers practitioners to exchange approaches.

For a family office, the practical use is in the directory and in what membership signals. An adviser who belongs to PPI has chosen to spend time on family dynamics, communication and the human side of succession rather than only on structures and returns. That will not suit every situation, but when a family's real problem is that two siblings cannot agree, it is a better starting point than another technical opinion.