In her work with donors, Ellis kept noticing a gap. Many wanted to donate in a way that left them feeling joyful and energized, but their philanthropy felt a bit lacking. Ellis, former interim dean at the Tucker Foundation and founding director at the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact, launched Liminality Partners in 2012. Her philanthropic advising practice helps people thoughtfully plan their giving.
“Our mission is to help families give with joy so they can create greater impact,” the religion major says. “Ultra-high-net-worth families—families with assets in excess of $20 million—have a lot of dark emotions around their wealth. If you can get family members to a place of feeling joyful when they give, it can create manifold more change than if they’re doing it from a place of shame or guilt or obligation.” Liminality grew out of her curiosity whether there was a better way for nonprofits to access capital and “how folks who hold the capital get to the place where they’re feeling wildly excited about what they’re doing.”
Families that think they want to give to a big-name organization sometimes discover they instead want to donate to a trusted smaller organization. “For a family that’s looking to make, say, a $50,000 gift, $50,000 to an organization that has a budget of $1 million can be transformative,” she says. “Fifty thousand dollars to an organization that has a budget of $50 million—they might not even get a call back.”
Ellis started the nonprofit Common Impact in 2000, building skills-based volunteer programs for corporations that, for example, matched people with information technology skills to nonprofits that needed the help. Edwin M. Kania Jr. ’79, who chaired Common Impact’s board, says he initially engaged Ellis to help his family “articulate a set of shared values and a philanthropic vision. In a disciplined but gentle fashion, she surfaced our differences, drew out commonalities none of us expected, and produced a family statement that genuinely surprised us—distinctive, clarifying, and motivating.”
