Business owners, founders, and independent thinkers are often excellent problem solvers. They know how to hire experts when the stakes are high—attorneys for legal matters, CPAs for taxes, advisors for investments. But philanthropy often gets treated as something simpler, more intuitive. Something you can “figure out along the way.”

For decades, many generous individuals have been taught a core principle of sound investing: diversify your portfolio. In philanthropy, the opposite of diversification is often what creates the greatest impact.

There’s no single right way to give. What matters is finding the ways that align with who we are—and choosing to show up.

Complexity is rarely added for your benefit. Advice that is aligned, transparent, and rooted in your interests reads cleanly. You can see what you’re getting. The “ingredients” look familiar and make sense. But when a firm’s service description balloons into a maze of cross-references, when conflicts of interest require paragraphs of explanation, or when fee structures sprawl across multiple subsections, it’s worth pausing…

Because a charitable budget isn’t about restricting generosity. It’s about clarifying it. It’s a simple tool that helps ensure your giving is aligned with your values, sustainable across your lifetime, and impactful in a way that feels right to you.

A Giving Circle is really just a group of people who decide to pool their charitable contributions and make decisions as a team. But the simplicity of the model hides something much deeper: people learning together, listening to one another, building community and directing their compassion in a coordinated way.

I’ve come to know that money, for all the tension it carries, is one of the clearest mirrors we have. Every spending choice is a vote. Every investment is a signal. Every savings habit is preparation for the future we believe is possible. And every act of giving—no matter how humble—is a declaration of what we stand for.