Of the approximately $84 trillion flowing to younger generations in succession “large transfer of wealth”about $12 trillion is likely to be earmarked for charity, as young adults and millennials are trying to align their values and beliefs with their assets, as well as take advantage of favorable tax strategies.
Furthermore, many of the younger beneficiaries will not invest (or give) the way their parents and grandparents did, creating an even more significant knowledge gap. Dien Yuen is seeking to bridge that divide and facilitate intergenerational wealth transfer in her role as founder and CEO of Bay Area-based Daylight Advisors, a professional education and certification organization for advisors focused on philanthropy.
“The generation you are inheriting is much more globally focused and socially influential. They lived through COVID, didn't they?” said Yuen in an interview with WealthManagement.com. “They lived through many of these issues, through climate change and racial reckoning. So they want to be involved in making decisions about how to do better.”
Yuen's passion for philanthropy began in her childhood in the 1970s. One night, her family left Vietnam by boat and lived briefly in a refugee camp before arriving in Michigan. Yuen recalled the comforting presence of the Red Cross during her time at the camp and recalled the Salvation Army, Goodwill and other community organizations helping her family when she first came to the state.
“It was those types of organizations that brought my family all together and gave us shelter and food and everything,” she said. “That's why I love doing this job.”
Yuen founded Daylight Advisors in 2023, after stints at Evercore Wealth Management and founding the Center for Philanthropy and Social Impact at the American College of Financial Sciences (she also taught advisors and holds a chartered advisor designation in philanthropy).
In the next few years, Yuen hopes to train approximately 10,000 advisors in philanthropic planning through Daylight's certification programs, including the recently released Impact Philanthropy Advisor certification.
In 2025, Daylight will launch several new certificates, including segment-specific programs that focus on working with women, LGBTQ clients and small business owners, and those that focus on impact investing, collaborative giving and behavioral philanthropy .
The latter uses behavioral finance lessons to understand how to work with clients involved in frequent family dynamics and discussions (which have likely only increased with the ongoing tension on the world stage and the recent presidential election in USA).
“What evil do they want to correct in the world? These are not questions of financial planning,” she said. “These are questions about how we can help our customers thrive.”
Yuen's primary goal for Daylight Advisors is to help advisors gain confidence in their ability to talk with clients about philanthropic planning and develop the cultural agility to do so fluidly between families that may seem very different ( and have different priorities) than families in past decades. .
“That's our ultimate goal, if we can help counselors feel comfortable speaking up, have the resources to do it, but also be able to work with all different types of clients,” she said.