Giving Compass' Take:

• Martin Segal, philanthropist and managing director of the Segal Family Foundation, offers his insight on running a family foundation.

• Segal says the foundation has nine partners on the ground working in four countries that help decide where to invest money. Why is it essential to have the people who are working in those countries help allocate funds?

•  Want to stay in the know when it comes to family philanthropy? Check out the Family Philanthropy Giving Compass Guide.

As managing director of Segal Family Foundation, I’ve been interviewed on TV in Malawi; I've had meetings with Liberia’s Ministry of Education, and I've gone fishing with the locals of Mfangano Island in Kenya. This is all a far cry from my day job as a real estate investor -- and it isn’t a role I was trained for.

None of us knew anything about philanthropy -- we’re business people! But we’re also family people. So, we jumped in with both feet, and now SFF supports more than 200 grassroots organizations across the continent.

Here’s what we’ve learned about running a foundation over the past 10 years:

  • It's about more than just money. Think about your grantees -- is there a service they could benefit from? Better yet, simply asking is a more direct way to figure out their needs. We regularly survey our partners, and every site visit ends with the question, “How can we better support you?”
  • Invest in people in the know. Deciding who we would fund and why became a much more informed process when Segal Family Foundation hired its first team members based in Kampala, Uganda. These days, we have nine team members on the ground in four countries, providing rich diligence on how our partners are doing.
  • Find your niche. The value we bring to the philanthropy table is that, through our investments in local staff and systems, we are good at identifying and empowering visionary leaders of early stage organizations.
  • Collaboration is key. On both sides of the Atlantic, we make a point to bring together our community -- grassroots NGOs, service providers and other donors -- for informal happy hours, technical training workshops and a conference-style annual meeting.

Read the full article about lessons from a philanthropist by Martin Segal at Forbes