“We help our clients to draw up their philanthropic project and transform it into concrete actions”

Profiles and demands have changed significantly over the past five years, and even more so since the Covid crisis. Fifteen years ago, the typical philanthropist client was a man aged 70 to 85 who wanted to bequeath part of his assets to an association or foundation upon his death, and who was wondering which organization to donate to. Today, it is more likely to be a woman, a man, or a couple, aged 30 to 65, who wants to transform society by building lasting solutions and witness the impact of their actions in their lifetime. Today's philanthropists are therefore no longer “merely” donors, they have become change makers: they have an increasingly precise notion of the societal change which they want to achieve and often want to be involved in the project operationally, by donating their time and skills. We meet more and more “philanthropreneurs”, i.e. people who want to manage their philanthropy with methods inspired by the business world, or even private equity, by using methodologies for in-depth selection of organizations or funded projects - based on a due diligence process - impact measurement and reporting: an approach called venture philanthropy. Moreover, we still get requests from older people for whom philanthropy is a response to issues surrounding the future of their real estate, natural (forests) or movable (art collection) assets. Even if now, they often become concerned about it when they reach their sixties.

Future philanthropists are introduced to us by their private banker. We have a qualitative and tailor-made consulting approach, consisting of an in-depth diagnosis and a proposal for a philanthropic strategy to carry out their project. During the initial listening and discussion phase, we help them to clarify and prioritize the cause and the beneficiaries, their objectives, their time resources, their financial capacities, the possible strategies to be implemented, etc. We then carry out an in-depth analysis of the specific issue, the organizations already existing in the field and provide details of the solutions which strike us as the most appropriate, outlining the difficulties to factor in for each, as well as the legal and tax impacts - in liaison with the experts in Wealth & Estate Planning from BNP Paribas Wealth Management. For highly specific requests, we call on external experts, lawyers, tax experts, solicitors or specialists in a particular field or geographical area. In concrete terms, the solutions we propose can be as follows: the creation of a foundation, the identification of organizations of general interest to which a donation can be made or with which to co-build a project, or even advice on developing a philanthropic structure that clients have already created and which they want to make more effective.