Philanthropy & Impact
Turn wealth into the impact you intend
High-net-worth individuals and families whose capacity to give outpaces the clarity of their intent, and foundations or family offices that want their resources to land harder. Not a track for casual donors, but for those whose giving is consequential enough to deserve disciplined thought.
The work
Joanna Wasmuth brings twenty-five years of nonprofit leadership, donor relationships built across more than 50 countries, and a deep command of the structural and relational dimensions of giving.
We work with donors and funders as trusted counsel, not as fundraisers or financial advisors. Our role is to help you give with intention, and to design the conditions under which your philanthropy produces the impact you mean it to.
What we offer
Foundation, charity, and DAF design
We help you choose and establish the right vehicle, a private foundation, a donor-advised fund, a charitable giving plan, or a combination, based on your governance preferences, giving timeline, and desired involvement.
Legacy and giving strategy
For donors thinking about the long arc of their generosity: succession thinking for family foundations, planned and legacy gift design, and the longer-term narrative of what your philanthropy means.
HNWI roundtables
Intimate roundtables where participants engage with vetted projects, meet peers committed to the same causes, and have substantive conversations rarely possible elsewhere. Not cultivation events, structured opportunities for serious thinking.
Impact acceleration for funders
For foundations already deployed in a cause area, strategic counsel and a curated network to help giving reach further. The philanthropic counterpart to Harmony’s technology track.
Branded programs
The Five-Step Approach
Purpose, Mission, Involvement, Structure, Sustainability. Not a checklist, but a structured conversation that surfaces the human clarity that makes the structural choices mean something.
Why Harmony
Philanthropic counsel with real strategic depth is rare. What Joanna brings is not a set of templates. It is the ability to hold the relational complexity of a family’s values alongside the technical complexity of charitable structure, and to help both work together.
The network she has built across the world of impact means a Harmony client is not working from a catalog. They are working from a living, curated map of people, organizations, and opportunities that Joanna knows well enough to recommend with confidence.
How we begin
The same delivery formats we use across Harmony are available here, calibrated for donors and funders: a two-day Intensive to build strategy from the ground up, a three-week Accelerator that moves through the Five-Step Approach in full, a Next 90 cohort of funders, or a 12-month Private Client engagement.
Common questions
Should I set up a private foundation or use a donor-advised fund?
The real trade is control against burden. A donor-advised fund opens quickly, costs little to run, and can grant anonymously, but the sponsoring charity legally owns the assets and you advise rather than decide. A private foundation gives you full control, and brings filings, public disclosure, and running costs with it.
A donor-advised fund is an account held at a sponsoring public charity, funded by your irrevocable gift, from which you recommend grants. A private foundation is a separate legal entity you create, govern, and are responsible for.
| Donor-advised fund | Private foundation | |
|---|---|---|
| Setting it up | Days, little or no cost | Weeks to months, legal formation and IRS recognition |
| Who legally decides | The sponsoring charity. You advise. | You and your board decide. |
| Required annual payout | None in federal law | Roughly five percent of investment assets |
| Public disclosure | None. Grants can be anonymous. | An annual return listing board, grants, and salaries |
| Grants to individuals | Not permitted | Permitted, under proper procedure |
| Own staff and programs | No | Yes |
| Ongoing admin | A sponsor fee, typically well under one percent | Filings, bookkeeping, and compliance you own |
Do donor-advised funds have to give money away each year?
No, and this is the difference most people miss. A private foundation must distribute roughly five percent of its investment assets every year under federal law. A donor-advised fund carries no legally mandated payout at all, though individual sponsors set their own activity policies.
Why start a private family foundation if not for the tax treatment?
Because of what a foundation can do that a fund cannot. It can employ staff, run its own charitable programs, make grants to individuals under proper procedure, and give a family a durable structure for deciding together across generations. The tax treatment is a feature of the vehicle, not the reason to choose it.
General information, not tax or legal advice. Deduction limits, excise rates, and reporting rules change, and several were altered by federal tax law in 2025. Talk with your own advisor before acting on any of this.
Let’s talk about where you are
Describe what you are working toward, and what is standing in the way. We listen, and we ask the question you have not yet been asked.
Start a Conversation