UHNI’s Driving Change: How Family Offices Are Empowering Legacy and Philanthropy

Ultra-High Net-Worth Individuals (UHNI) and High Net-Worth Individuals (HNI) are deepening their focus on philanthropy, legacy building, and purposeful wealth stewardship and moving beyond wealth generation alone. The topics today turn from wealth generation to matters of governance, legacy, altruism, and purpose. As wealth increases in India and internationally, family offices, both Single-Family Office (SFO) model of governance and Multi-Family Office (MFO) solutions, are becoming central facilitators of this shift.

This blog studies the ecosystem of the Family Offices by deriving lessons from the leading global and India-centric reports, explaining the implication for families, wealth advisors, and the social sector.

Who Are the UHNIs and Why Do They Matter?

Globally, UHNIs (individuals with net worth >$30 million) control a disproportionate share of private capital. In India, their numbers and influence are growing rapidly: Donations by UHNI during FY2023 rose by a whopping 60% to ₹6,850 crore, according to the India Philanthropy Report 2024. The level of UHNI donors increased from ~100 up to ~120 during FY2021–2023. Family giving today makes up approximately 40% of private donations in India (Dasra-Bain 2025).

That’s a big pivot, UHNIs are not merely wealth holders but nation-builders forging education, environmental, and social equity outcomes.

The Emergence of the Family Office Ecosystem

Previously, wealthy families engaged private advisors and private bankers. Today, the Family Office ecosystem offers a structured approach to centralizing wealth, planning for succession, and guiding philanthropy.

Single-Family Offices (SFOs): Designed for the management of a single family, they offer centralization but a high resource intensity.

Multi-Family Offices (MFOs): Becoming popular vehicles, especially in India, by sharing expertise, economies of scale, and access to global best practices.

As Global Family Office Report by Campden Wealth reveals, MFO services keep growing as families expand into geographies, grapple with rising compliance, and diversify their portfolios into alternatives like private equity, venture capital, and impact investing.

Why are MFOs Becoming Indispensable?

Multi-Family Offices (MFOs) today are not only helping Ultra-High Net-Worth Individuals (UHNI) manage complex wealth portfolios but also guiding them in translating wealth into purpose through philanthropy and legacy planning. Their role spans both financial resilience and impact.

1. Portfolio Diversification & Alternative Assets

Beyond traditional equities and real estate, MFOs enable families to access alternative assets such as private credit, venture capital, and ESG linked investments, building resilience against uncertain markets.

2. Wealth Consolidation

Fragmented holdings across businesses, trusts, and geographies create governance and reporting challenges. MFOs streamline structures, consolidate wealth, and enhance transparency is key to both financial stability and intergenerational trust.

3. Estate and Succession Planning

With India set for one of the world’s largest wealth transfers, over $1.5 trillion by 2030 (Knight Frank). MFOs provide structured frameworks for succession, ensuring smooth leadership transitions while embedding family values and philanthropic intent.

4. Professionalisation of Governance

MFOs bring in specialist executives and outsourced expertise, moving family offices away from being patriarch/matriarch-led to institutionally governed entities. This professionalisation ensures continuity, compliance, and alignment with global best practices.

Philanthropy as a Primary Emphasis

Philanthropy is not anymore on the fringes. It’s central to how family offices and UHNIs define legacy:

• Dasra-Bain (2025) shows ~40% of family giving aligns with GEDI (Gender, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion), and ~29% goes towards climate action.
• EdelGive-Hurun (2024) tracked 203 philanthropists donating ₹8,783 crore, with Shiv Nadar alone contributing ₹2,153 crore. Worldwide, Stanford Social Innovation Review writes of a surge of “trust-based philanthropy” and new-gen donors emphasizing quantifiable results.

This points to a dual trend: not only are UHNIs increasing the scale of their giving, but they are also diversifying how they give through structured family foundations, impact investing, and collective philanthropy. In each of these, the demand for professional impact evaluation, outcome measurement, and advisory support is rising and this is precisely where MFOs can bridge the gap.

Why Professional Design and Evaluation Matter in UHNI Philanthropy

As UHNI giving grows in scale, the challenge is no longer just how much is donated, but how well it is deployed. Many families recognize that ad-hoc philanthropy often struggles with fragmented outcomes.

A professional approach to designing philanthropic projects and robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) can dramatically increase impact:

• Strategic Design: Aligning projects with clear goals, evidence-based interventions, and beneficiary needs, while also identifying credible implementing partners who can facilitate the impact that is envisioned.
• Outcome Measurement: Tracking results with data and feedback loops to refine interventions.
• Transparency & Accountability: Independent evaluations build credibility with stakeholders and ensure funds reach intended outcomes.
• Social Return on Investment (SROI): Going beyond financial inputs, SROI measures the broader value created for society, capturing outcomes like improved livelihoods, better health, or enhanced education access. For UHNIs, this metric ensures philanthropy is not just generous, but also transformative and measurable.

For UHNIs, Multi-Family Offices (MFOs) are increasingly the bridge here, combining financial governance with philanthropic advisory, ensuring donations achieve measurable outcomes.

This professionalisation of philanthropy also runs parallel to international trends. The Giving Pledge, begun by Warren Buffett and Bill & Melinda Gates, has witnessed more than 240 of the planet’s most wealthy people promise to donate the bulk of their fortunes. Though India has fewer signatories for the Pledge, the spirit of the Pledge—institutionalised, transparent, and purposeful philanthropy—finds tremendous resonance among the incoming generation of UHNIs.

In India, too, a clear transition is underway.

• Established leaders: Philanthropists like Azim Premji have set benchmarks by committing substantial portions of personal wealth to social causes, raising the standards of giving in India.
• Ecosystem builders: Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies has championed ecosystem-strengthening, focusing on areas such as water, governance, and education.
• New-generation entrepreneurs: Emerging UHNIs like Nikhil and Nithin Kamath are stepping forward as visible donors, pledging their commitment to philanthropy openly.

Together, these examples illustrate a growing enthusiasm among both established and newly emerging UHNIs to align their values and aspirations with structured, organized philanthropy. This movement is progressively transforming India’s philanthropic landscape, embedding purpose and strategy into wealth stewardship.

Next-Generation Priority

The next generation of wealth holders is reshaping both investment and philanthropy. TMF Group’s Redefining Resilience study highlights their preference for socially responsible and well-governed investments, signaling a shift from pure returns to purposeful capital. Complementing this, research by UBS and the Johnson Center shows younger donors lean toward digital platforms, transparent reporting, and values-based giving. In India, this trend is even more pronounced, around 93% of HNIs express interest in transition investing, channeling capital into low-carbon and sustainable opportunities. Together, these shifts underscore how next-gen priorities are redefining what it means to manage and deploy family wealth.

For MFOs, this would also mean creating vehicles which combine financial returns and impact returns from blended finance vehicles to catalytic capital.

Global unpredictability and localized adaptation

Family offices handle global uncertainties by employing three strategies:

• Diversification into Alternative Assets – protection against market fluctuations.
• Regionalization – diversifying risk by growing operations into new markets like India and Southeast Asia.
• Operational Efficiency – outsourcing to specialist MFOs for compliance, reporting, and cross-border complexities. TMF Group notes that many families are appointing external executives to ensure resilience in new markets.

What This Means for the Social Sector

• With the increasing number of family offices, the playing ground for NGOs, CSR wings, and charity platforms changes:
• Larger but More Strategic Grants: UHNIs require measures of impact and long-term results, not occasional charity.
• Centrality of Niche Issues: Climate, gender, equity, and ecosystem-strengthening are gaining prominence on the agenda.
• Multi-Year Partnerships: Families welcome patient capital but only when there is trust, transparency, and governance. These platforms such as Dasra, Bridgespan, and AVPN speak of NGOs becoming investment-ready, precise metrics, professional reporting, and congruence with family priorities.

The Future Direction

Future of the Family Office Sector in India India’s family office ecosystem is yet immature when compared with Europe or the US but expected to expand exponentially. Triggers for this growth include:

• Brisk accumulation of wealth by new entrepreneurs.
• Greater complexity of cross-border tax and regulatory regimes.
• A growing culture of impact investing and organized philanthropy.
• Intergenerational wealth transfer gains speed as demand for estate planning soars.
• Multi-Family Office services blending global best practice with local regulatory insight will find broader applicability.

Conclusion

The era of cheque-writing philanthropy is ending. UHNIs and HNIs forge legacies which balance wealth generation and contribution to society. The family office, SFO or MFO, is the template for this transformation: maintaining governance, diversifying portfolios, centralizing wealth, and ingraining philanthropy into family DNA.

For India, this evolution holds immense potential: more effective institutions, better-equipped social causes, and a new generation of mission-based wealth owners. For advisors, MFOs, and NGOs, the need is clear to develop a future where wealth for wealth’s sake matters less by what it measures, but by what it does.

Sources

• Dasra & Bain & Co., India Philanthropy Report 2024/2025 – UHNI giving trends, private philanthropy growth, sector allocations.
• EdelGive Foundation & Hurun India, India Philanthropy List 2024 – Top donors, total contributions.
• TMF Group, Redefining Resilience: How Family Offices are Adapting to Global Uncertainty and Next-Generation Priorities – Professionalization and next-gen shifts.
• Campden Wealth, Global Family Office Report – Asset allocation, governance trends.
• Knight Frank Wealth Report – Wealth transfer projections for India.
• UBS, Next-Gen Philanthropists; Johnson Center for Philanthropy, Trends in Philanthropy 2025 – Generational shifts in giving.
• Stanford Social Innovation Review – Trust-based philanthropy and global family office practices.
• Times of India (2024), coverage on HNIs’ interest in transition investing.