Statement of Purpose and Introduction to the Raffles Legacy Learning Center
Our ultimate purpose is to help you to create a better future for you and your family.
Far too often, due to a lack of knowledge, family leaders take decisions or fail to take the decisions when needed, that can have a major impact on the future of their families.
The track record of wealthy families, even the most famous, is not universally encouraging.
Comparing the list of the wealthiest American families more than a century ago (three generations in today’s terms), not one of the fables ‘Gilded Era’ families are on the list, or even anywhere near the top of the list of current wealthiest families. While still remembered for their business, social, philanthropic and other contributions, these great families may have a better past than future along many critical legacy dimensions.
Understanding what these and other great families have done, both right and wrong, is part of the knowledge and inspiration that has led to the development of the Raffles Legacy Learning initiative.
For many wealthy families, and for all families creating wealth in a first generation, there is no precedent or model within their experience for the transfer and preservation of that wealth to following generations of the family. This lack of prior experience can present many challenges, because only those capable of developing a forward strategy that stretches out across multiple generations are the most likely to preserve and enhance their family wealth across those same generations.
The Importance of Preserving Family Wealth
Understanding the true nature of family wealth, it becomes clear that preserving private and family wealth can be an important societal good – and provide substantial social benefit as well as contributing to a better future for the family and individuals concerned.
For private wealth is not a zero sum game: one family’s loss may well not be anyone’s gain. The energy that family wealth can represent can be important for many other people whose livelihoods, families and communities depend on that support for continuity and progress. Jobs, supplier, service businesses, customers, capital for new and existing business ventures, tax revenues for community investment, philanthropic contribution, and a whole host of other benefits rely on the positive impact that family wealth can offer.
The nature of family wealth is a kind of energy similar to that of a fire. If poorly managed or left unattended, it can be substantially reduced or even extinguished entirely with no one benefitting from the loss. The diminution or disappearance of family wealth can leave a gap never to be filled by other sources, leaving behind only the ashes of memory of what once was, and deep regret of the loss of what could have been.
The wealth can simply dissipate, a word defined by F Scott Fitzgerald in Babylon Revisited as ‘making nothing out of something’.
A Unique Form of Strategy
However, with understanding, dedication and informed action, family wealth can indeed be preserved and enhanced through times both good and bad. Family wealth and legacy planning, and the strategies and tactics it contains, can indeed lead to a better future, but only if its unique challenges and opportunities can be well mastered.
Family wealth and legacy strategy is different from any other kind of strategy. There are unique, complex and interrelated historical, psychological, social, financial, commercial, legislative, trust, tax and other issues to consider. Family strategy requires a long term view that extends forward across three generations (at least), at a time when business, technology and other strategies are often getting shorter in cycle.
There is not a clearly defined competitor with whom to compete, or against whom one can measure relative success or performance; the strategic foe are more likely to be found in the volatility and vicissitudes of financial markets, the risks of substantial tax obligations, the weight of history, the burden of great potential and the many human problems that can arise within the family itself.
Finding Solutions
As Albert Einstein once famously stated, ‘ The solution to a problem never arises at the same level as the problem itself’. To resolve the problem of family wealth dissipation in a later generation, the best solution may well lie in addressing the full set of family wealth challenges now, before the problem of wealth dissipation arises.
Good family strategy needs to look deeply and honestly into family history, but also needs to gaze forward with intelligence and realism into a future yet to come.
Family Spirit and Individual Fulfilment
In the pursuit of the goal of a happier and more substantial future for a family, one cannot lose sight of the fact that a family is both an entity in itself and a collection of unique individual members.
Great family strategy will need to consider and facilitate the achievements and aspirations of the greater family, but also take into consideration the individual personalities, lives and legacies of all of its individual members. Fostering a sense of purpose and meaningful accomplishment can be a powerful contributor to the successful future of any privileged family and its members, significantly increasing the likelihood of the family remaining together and prospering through time and across generations.
Ultimately, the Raffles Legacy Learning offering is an initiative and opportunity for those who wish to understand and manage their own family wealth to join the club of the world’s best managed wealthy families and stay there.