"If you've met one family office… you've met one family office."
It's a saying that rings true across the wealth management industry. Shaped by their values, their history, their governance structures, and their investment constraints, every family's impact journey is unique.
Yet, while the paths vary, most family offices face the same fundamental questions: How do we align multiple generations around a shared vision? How do we know if our portfolio truly reflects our values? What impact measurement frameworks actually work in practice?
After working with hundreds of families, The ImPact identified patterns in how families successfully navigate these questions and distilled their observations into a powerful, evidence-based framework: 10 Key Actions for Impact Investing.
But frameworks alone don't close the gap between intention and implementation. We at CSP and our partners at The ImPact have come to realize case studies and stories from the field are sometimes best fit to communicate the ideas needed to see complex strategies and processes in new light.
That's why we partnered to do something different: bring the 10 Key Actions to life through the actual implementation stories of eight family offices who have walked the talk.
This isn't a report about what families should do. It's a collection of blueprints showing what they actually did, including the non-linear parts that don't make it into the sanitized case studies.
The framework: The ImPact's 10 key actions
The ImPact’s framework isn’t prescriptive. It doesn’t say “start with Action 1 and work your way through”. Instead, it recognizes a critical truth: Families rarely, if ever, work through these actions in a linear order.
Some start with ingredient #1 (defining their guiding lights) and work methodically through the list. Others jump straight to ingredient #8 (establishing impact measurement) because that's where they're stuck. Some tackle multiple ingredients simultaneously.
The value of the framework is giving you a map to orient yourself; to know where you are, identify where you're stuck, and chart what comes next.
1. Define Your "Guiding Lights"
Articulate your family's values and the impact you want to create. This becomes the North Star for all investment decisions.
2. Achieve Family Buy-In to a Shared Vision
Align multiple generations and stakeholders around a common impact investment strategy, often the hardest action to master.
3. Build an Investment Team for Your Strategy
Decide whether to build in-house expertise, outsource to specialists, or create a blended model. There's no one-size-fits-all answer.
4. Map Your Assets to Know What You Own
Understand exactly what's in your portfolio and whether it aligns with your stated values. You can't manage what you don't measure.
5. Build Impact into Your Investment Policy Statement (IPS)
Elevate impact from product selection to policy. This formalizes your approach and creates accountability.
6. Weave Impact into Your Due Diligence
Add a layer of social and environmental analysis to every investment decision, not just an ESG screening checklist.
7. Build an Impact Portfolio in Accordance with Your IPS
Source opportunities, structure investments, and monitor performance against both financial and impact goals.
8. Establish an Impact Measurement Methodology
Choose frameworks and metrics that actually tell you whether you're creating the impact you intend, not just alignment.
9. Engage the Institutions That Support Your Assets
Proactively work with wealth managers and asset managers to raise their standards and improve their impact products.
10. Support the Flourishing of an Impact Ecosystem
Give back through funding, expertise, and networks. This ultimately improves the quality of future investment opportunities.
From framework to implementation with real family office stories
The family stories in Ten ingredients for Impact Investing provide real-life examples, and inspiration, on how you can bridge framework to practice. They reveal something frameworks can’t: the how behind the what.
We pulled 3 examples from the publication to show you how others walked the path from framework to implementation – in their own, non-linear, context-dependent reality.
Keller Enterprises: The power of an investment policy statement
For the first decade of its existence, Keller Enterprises had no formal Investment Policy Statement. The family had clearly defined values (established during a three-day retreat in 2007), but investment decisions were based on the judgment of a few individuals, instead of an explicit guide that could be used to communicate the strategy and logic behind investment decisions.
"Investment proposals would simply be accepted or rejected by the board based on personal opinions with no frameworks to guide decision-making," recalls family member Temple Fennell.
The lack of structure made decisions inconsistent and difficult to communicate.
When Keller finally introduced an impact-focused IPS (ingredient #5), some family members worried it would be too constraining. Instead, it became a liberation. "The CIO of the family office has since become one of the biggest advocates for the IPS as a decision-making framework," Temple notes. "And when family members are interested in their investments, the IPS allows them to understand their portfolio and hold the board accountable."
The IPS transformed tacit values into explicit strategy and gave the family a common language for investment conversations.
Skagen Capital: When portfolio mapping revealed an uncomfortable truth
A few years ago, Skagen Conscience Capital, a UK-based family office deeply committed to a low-carbon future, went through what CEO Mark Preston calls "the process of mapping their assets."
What they discovered was uncomfortable. "They realized that their largest public equity holding was in ExxonMobil," Mark recalls. "This was just exposure through passive strategies."
For a family who is committed to aligning its portfolio with a low-carbon future, a position in one of the world's largest publicly traded oil and gas companies was both inconsistent with the family’s commitment and a clear investment risk.
Mapping the portfolio has since then become a regular exercise for Skagen Conscience Capital. They developed their "Transition to a Better Future" framework where they group investments as either inconsistent, neutral, contributing, or accelerating the transition to a better future.
External managers now report against this framework quarterly. The family uses these reports to decide which holdings to keep, which to sell, and how to hold their investment partners accountable.
"The process of classifying enables us to focus," Mark explains. "This has been immensely helpful in conversations with our investment partners."
The framework also includes risk management implications, spotting issues like IT fraud, key-person risks, and inconsistent asset risks that go beyond traditional financial analysis.
Cape Capital: Building the team to match the ambition
When Cape Capital, a multi-family office in Europe, started integrating impact investing for their clients, they faced a skills gap.
"Both the families and the family office had to learn and familiarize themselves with a new approach to investing," explains Caglar Bilgin, Cape Capital's Sustainability Lead. "Despite having completed trainings in the field, the territory remained largely uncharted."
So Cape Capital tackled ingredient #3: Build an Investment Team by bringing in an external consultant to train their in-house staff while developing new processes and products.
"It was interesting to observe the differences in understanding that people in the firm had regarding the topics of sustainable finance and impact investing," Caglar recalls. "Engaging with an institution helped us to align our views, step up our knowledge, and stay ahead of developments in the topic."
The trainings enabled Cape Capital’s team to support their clients in defining and executing their impact investing strategies, aligning investing and impact preferences with products and deals.
What happens next?
The ImPact's framework gives you the map. The case studies show you how eight families actually walked the terrain. But implementation is still personal. Your family's path will be unique, shaped by your values, your constraints, your opportunities, and your starting point.
A self assessment
The ImPact’s 10 key action framework is not prescriptive, it’s a diagnostic tool. Use it to orient yourself within your own journey:
1. Which ingredients have we completed?
Even partially? Give yourself credit for progress, not just perfection.
2. Which ingredient is our biggest current bottleneck?
Are you stuck on family buy-in? Struggling with impact measurement? Frustrated by your wealth manager's offerings?
3. What would change if we completed that ingredient?
Would decisions become easier? Would you feel more confident about your impact? Would you unlock new opportunities?
4. Which ingredient naturally comes next for us?
Remember: The order isn't fixed. Follow the path that makes sense for YOUR family's context.
5. Do we need external support and of what kind?
Almost every family in the research worked with facilitators, consultants, or peer networks at critical junctures.
Explore all eight families’ implementation journeys
Resources on the technicalities of impact investing are ample. Case studies on actual implementation in the context of UHNW families and individuals are much more scarce. We hope the stories from implementation provide the much needed guidance on how to move from theory to practice.
Download the full report to see all eight families’ implementation journeys:
- Where they started: not always with Action 1
- What sparked their journey: portfolio misalignment, family tension, regulatory pressure, generational transition
- Breakthroughs and what they'd do differently
- How long it took: realistic timelines, not consultant projections
- What worked in their context: solutions tied to their specific constraints and opportunities
Go deeper and learn from family offices in-person
If you could, what would you ask principals and single family office executives about their impact journeys and operational blueprints for integrating impact into their investment and governance model?
That’s what’s happening this June 2026. VP Capital, Blink Impact, and Imladris, three leading impact-focused family offices, are opening their books in a confidential cohort program. Over three days, they’ll share their own blueprints for engaging families on the topic of impact, setting up decision-making structures and governance, ensuring rigorous and accurate reporting across complex portfolios, and building portfolios across all asset classes.
This isn't a seminar. It's a peer-to-peer laboratory where you can:
- Ask the questions you can't ask in commercial settings
- Pressure-test your own approach with families who've done this work
- Design your personalized roadmap with guidance from practitioners
- Build relationships with principals and SFO executives navigating similar challenges
The program is capped at 15 family office principals and heads to ensure deep, transparent dialogue.
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