Giving Compass' Take:

• The National Center For Family Philanthropy shares advice for appropriately separating personal matters from family philanthropy to ensure lasting foundations and impact.

• How do your family dynamics play out in the board room? How can you shift to a more appropriate division of personal and professional spaces? 

• Another key aspect is managing conflict when it does arise. Here's another article that may help out in that regard.

One of the great opportunities of family philanthropy is spending meaningful time with those you love and know well. The challenge of family philanthropy is to avoid the stereotypes and patterns you are used to when you move out of the family room and into the boardroom. The unkind nicknames, the blunt tone, and the teasing if embarrassing family lore we use with one another in casual settings can be hurtful and, most of the time, inappropriate when the family turns to the business of charitable giving.

Complicating these patterns, are the passions and personal interests family members bring to choosing grantmaking priorities. When all that emotion meets up with all that familiarity, we can find ourselves headed for language and attitude we would likely never use with other professional colleagues or strangers. How to keep the conversation constructive and civil? Here are seven tips I’ve learned can help keep the work and your family relationships on track:

  1. Write down key precepts for doing the work.
  2. Remember what you share and how you are alike at least as often as you focus on how you are different.
  3. Stress the differences between those family room conversations and the propriety and respect the board room (and the philanthropy) deserve.
  4. Recognize the critical value of an experienced and skilled board chair.
  5. Deal directly with the "outlier."
  6. Appreciate the value of having a non-family presence on the board.
  7. Take advantage of the strategic five-minute break.

Read the full article about keeping family relationships strong in the boardroom by Virginia Esposito at National Center for Family Philanthropy.