Why Philanthropic Planning is Essential for Today’s Wealth Advisors
Professional Advisor Partnerships
“Every family is different. Stay curious about the people you’re working with, the work you are doing, and the kind of work you should be doing.”
— Jennifer Grosvenor, President of the Houston Market at Northern Trust
How Northern Trust and Greater Houston Community Foundation Partner to Create Better Outcomes for Clients
For Jennifer Grosvenor, President of the Houston Market at Northern Trust, wealth planning is never just about numbers. It is about helping families define what matters, prepare for the future, and make decisions that reflect their values.
That kind of guidance is increasingly important. Wealth planning conversations now extend far beyond investment management and estate structures. Clients are asking deeper questions about legacy, purpose, family engagement, and charitable impact. In 2025, Americans gave an estimated $617.2 billion to charity, a 5.7% increase over 2024, according to Giving USA 2026. As generosity grows and families think more intentionally about impact, advisors need to remain curious, continue learning, and know when to bring specialized expertise to the table.
That mindset was on display when Greater Houston Community Foundation met with advisors across Northern Trust’s Houston, Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth offices to discuss how philanthropy can be integrated into a client’s overall wealth planning strategy. The conversation reinforced a shared belief: advisors who stay curious and collaborate with specialists are better equipped to serve families across generations.
For Jennifer, the presentation was also an investment in her team’s continued growth. By giving advisors dedicated time to deepen their knowledge of charitable planning, she reinforced the importance of education, collaboration, and knowing when to bring philanthropic expertise into client conversations.
About Jennifer Grosvenor
Jennifer brings more than 20 years of experience advising affluent families and individuals and business owners on complex wealth planning needs. Trained as an attorney, she found her calling not in traditional legal practice, but in the people-centered work of helping families make important decisions about wealth, legacy, and purpose. Her role has evolved into being part wealth advisor and part family counselor, helping clients address questions that often go far beyond financial planning.
Since joining Northern Trust in 2017, Jennifer has led the Houston trust practice and now oversees a team of 75 professionals. Jennifer prepares her team to navigate the nuanced, often deeply personal conversations that come with advising large, multigenerational families. “When we work with clients, we consider all of the goals and try to quantify them,” Jennifer shared. “Lifestyle, spending, weddings, travel, educating kids—all the things that make a person’s life work.” By helping clients understand what is possible, Northern Trust gives families the information they need to make decisions with greater confidence.
For Jennifer, philanthropy is an opportunity for families to define what matters most, share their values with the next generation, and create a legacy that reflects who they are. That perspective was shaped early in life. Her mother has spent more than 40 years leading a nonprofit organization, giving Jennifer a front-row seat to the profound difference that generosity, service, and community involvement can make. Those experiences shaped her belief that charitable planning can help families connect across generations and turn giving into lasting impact.
Jennifer brings that commitment to her own service on the boards of Houston Botanic Garden and CarePartners, both connected to clients whose lives and values she wanted to honor. Through Houston Botanic Garden, she supports work that brings beauty and connection to the greater Houston region. Through CarePartners, she helps advance support for caregivers of people living with dementia, a mission that is especially meaningful because of her father’s experience with dementia.
At Northern Trust, Jennifer sees philanthropy as both a professional responsibility and a shared value. Her Houston colleagues serve on 30 governing boards, support nonprofits personally, and volunteer together throughout the year. “Northern Trust is very enthusiastic about giving back, so giving philanthropic advice is an organic component of our approach to advising,” Jennifer said. “We can talk the talk because our team truly walks the walk.”
Curiosity Creates Better Advisors
With more than two decades of experience advising families, business owners, and individuals, Jennifer has seen Houston’s wealth landscape change significantly over time. What was once dominated by traditional oil wealth now includes successful entrepreneurs and corporate executives across a broad range of industries. With that evolution comes greater complexity and a wider range of client objectives. “The pool of assets described to define wealth is now much deeper and comes with a lot more complexity,” Jennifer added.
Advisors today are helping clients navigate questions that extend beyond wealth accumulation, shifting to how wealth will be transferred:
- How do I prepare the next generation?
- How do I create a meaningful legacy?
- How do I align my wealth with my values?
- How can my charitable giving make a greater impact?
These conversations require advisors to look beyond technical planning and stay open to new ways of helping families. Guiding clients to create meaning by aligning their accomplishments with their values.
Jennifer sees philanthropy as one of the most valuable tools in those discussions. She shared, “Giving is helpful in so many ways. It’s great from a tax perspective, but I keep seeing family philanthropy used as a mechanism to educate the next generation. I’ve seen giving used to help children understand how to manage a pool of money and learn what you can do to evaluate charities to see which ones would be great recipients of support.” Beyond potential tax benefits, charitable planning can help families clarify priorities, involve the next generation, and define the impact they hope to leave behind.
Why Specialized Partners Matter
The needs of ultra-high-net-worth clients rarely fit neatly within a single discipline. As wealth becomes more complex, so do the financial, family, and philanthropic decisions that come with it. The most effective advisors recognize that delivering exceptional guidance often means bringing together specialists with deep expertise in complementary areas.
When discussing the role Greater Houston Community Foundation plays in serving shared clients, Jennifer emphasized the value of working alongside philanthropic specialists who can help families translate their values into meaningful action. “Our team is always looking at ways to get better,” she said. “We need to know that we are partnering with people who have such deep philanthropic expertise—who do this even more often than we do. This helps us refine how we are talking to our clients to better serve them.”
That kind of team education is increasingly important for advisor firms serving families with complex wealth, multigenerational planning needs, and charitable goals. Greater Houston Community Foundation can help advisory teams build confidence in philanthropic planning, understand giving strategies, and identify when a charitable conversation could strengthen the client relationship.
For advisors, that expertise can be especially valuable as families seek more sophisticated charitable solutions, including complex asset gifts, next-generation engagement strategies, donor advised fund options, and impact-focused giving approaches. The Community Foundation is an extension of the Northern Trust advisory team, bringing deep knowledge of the greater Houston region’s nonprofit landscape, gift planning, and strategic grantmaking expertise, helping advisors offer thoughtful options without stepping outside their core role.
Philanthropy is no longer a secondary conversation. For advisors, the data shows that it is a relationship-building strategy that supports retention, acquisition, and multigenerational continuity. When families are preparing to transfer wealth, charitable planning can create a natural way to engage spouses, children, and grandchildren in conversations about values, stewardship, and shared purpose.
A Natural Alignment of Values
The partnership between Northern Trust and Greater Houston Community Foundation is strengthened by a shared commitment to putting clients first. Jennifer points to three elements of Northern Trust’s attitude that shapes how her team serves families: continuous learning, teamwork, and doing the right thing for clients. The firm encourages professionals to learn from one another, draw on diverse expertise, and approach every relationship collaboratively. “We are not a place where success is measured by individual recognition,” Jennifer said. “Everything we do, we do as a team.”
Equally important is the firm’s commitment to client-centered decision making. “There is an ethos of doing the right thing for clients, even if it is not the best thing for us financially,” she said. That philosophy closely mirrors Greater Houston Community Foundation’s approach to working with professional advisors and their clients. The Community Foundation’s role is not to replace the advisor relationship, but to strengthen it with philanthropic expertise, educational resources, local nonprofit insight, and charitable planning solutions. According to Jennifer, one of the greatest advantages of working with the Community Foundation is that the team brings proactive ideas to the table. She shared “They [the Community Foundation] bring several ideas to the table. They go beyond just implementing our ideas. They give us options for what we can do, which takes our value to our clients further. They are thinking about the future just like we are.”
Better Together
As trillions of dollars are expected to transfer between generations in the coming years through the ‘Great Wealth Transfer,’ advisors are facing new challenges and opportunities. Cerulli Associates projects that $124 trillion will transfer through 2048, including $105 trillion to heirs and $18 trillion to charity. Millennials are expected to inherit $46 trillion over the next 25 years, while Gen X is expected to inherit the largest share over the next 10 years, totaling $14 trillion.
Jennifer sees this firsthand. “Some of my long-time families and clients are now looking from the initial generation to the next generation that will follow,” Jennifer shared. “It is helpful to be able to talk with the Community Foundation, which knows the Houston philanthropic landscape—what they see, who does what, and overall giving trends for our area.”
Clients expect deeper expertise, broader solutions, and more meaningful conversations about purpose, impact, and legacy from their advisors. “I am noticing how the next generation has a lot more metrics that they want to see to measure the impact of their giving,” Jennifer said. “They want to know if an organization has been a good steward of the money they’ve given.” For advisors, that means philanthropic planning must include both strategy and education, helping families understand where their gifts can make a difference and how to evaluate results over time.
Meeting those expectations requires more than technical knowledge. It requires curiosity, collaboration, and access to specialized expertise. “We all have to learn a lot all the time—the landscape is constantly evolving,” Jennifer said. “New investments, new ways of doing things, new opportunities, increasingly sophisticated estate structures. We can’t be experts in everything, but we can partner with the right specialists to ensure we develop the most beneficial plans for our clients.”
For Jennifer, one area for continued learning is the Community Foundation’s ability to accept unique and complex assets. “So many of our clients have things that are valuable but not easy to pass on—this knowledge is critical,” she shared. By combining wealth planning expertise with specialized philanthropic knowledge with the Community Foundation, advisors can help clients align financial and charitable goals, strengthen family engagement, and create lasting impact in the communities they care about most.
For advisors, the lesson is simple: the more we learn from one another, the better we can serve the families who place their trust in us.
Let’s Collaborate
If your clients are asking deeper questions about purpose, legacy, or impact, Greater Houston Community Foundation can help. Our team works alongside professional advisors to provide charitable planning expertise, local nonprofit insight, and giving solutions that help families turn generosity into lasting impact. We can also present to your team on philanthropic planning topics, from donor advised fund strategies to complex assets and family giving conversations. Connect with Andrea Mayes, Senior Director of Charitable Solutions, to discuss how we can work with you to help your clients achieve their charitable goals.
More Helpful Articles by Greater Houston Community Foundation:
- Guide to Donating Illiquid Assets
- High-Net-Worth Philanthropy for HNW Individuals and Families
- What Happens to Charitable Assets in a Divorce? What Advisors Need to Know
- Partnership in Action: 2025 Professional Advisor Breakfast
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