DAG Family Office
The strategic layer above day-to-day wealth management
Strategic consulting for family offices: architecture, foundation strategy, partner selection, governance, transitions, and operating model design. For families building new offices and refining existing ones.
The hard problems are organizational, not financial
By the time a family reaches the point where a family office makes sense, the financial complexity is rarely the main problem. The investments exist. The advisors exist. What's usually missing is the structure that holds the pieces together over time. Consulting work at DAG tends to come up around five questions:
01
Are we building this thing the right way?
For founding families spinning up a single-family office or transitioning from a multi-family office to something dedicated.
02
Is the foundation structured for the impact we actually want?
For families whose charitable work has grown past ad hoc giving and needs governance, strategy, and operational rigor.
03
Are we working with the right partners?
For families ready to evaluate the advisor, custodian, attorney, and CPA relationships that have accumulated over decades.
04
What happens at the next transition?
For families staring at the founder's eventual exit, the next generation taking over, or a major business sale that changes everything.
05
Do we have a real decision-making structure?
Or just a tradition of who shows up at meetings? For families ready to formalize how decisions actually get made.
The five core engagement areas
Family Office Architecture
Designing the office itself. Organizational structure, leadership roles, reporting lines, in-house vs. outsourced decisions, technology platforms, custody relationships, and the day-to-day operating rhythm. Output: a family office that can actually run.
Foundation & Philanthropic Strategy
Mission clarity, governance structure, grantmaking processes, impact tracking, and family involvement in foundation decisions. Coordinated with DAFs, private foundations, CRTs, CLTs, and the broader estate plan.
Strategic Partner Selection
A structured evaluation process so the family selects partners against defined criteria (cultural fit, technical capability, fee transparency, and conflict structure) rather than the first relationship that came up in conversation.
Legacy Continuity & Transition Design
Next-generation education, leadership succession at the family office level, ownership transitions in family businesses, and the documented frameworks that allow the office to keep operating without the founders.
Strategic Advisory Councils
Designing and standing up an advisory board. Defining the board's role, selecting members, setting meeting rhythms, building decision protocols. Boards that work change decisions; ones that don't waste calendars.
Operational excellence and governance
Operating Model Review
Technology stack, vendor management, process design, reporting workflows, and the operational decisions that determine whether the office runs efficiently or burns time on coordination.
Governance Framework Development
Decision rights, escalation paths, conflict resolution processes, and the documented expectations that prevent ambiguity from becoming dispute.
Family Legacy Blueprint
A documented family constitution capturing the values, principles, and governance norms that guide the family across generations. A proprietary discovery process surfaces what actually matters, then translates that into a living document.
Strategic Communication Design
Meeting rhythms, communication protocols, secure collaboration tools, and the structures that keep multi-generational families talking productively.
Digital Infrastructure & Security
Reviewing the family office's digital asset management top to bottom. Cybersecurity posture, data management practices, automation opportunities, and the communication platforms used for family and advisor coordination.
Who builds it
Former family office leaders, foundation directors, and people who have run family-owned businesses through liquidity events and generational transitions.
The recommendations come from people who have implemented them on the operating side. The framework gets stress-tested before it gets presented.
Common engagement shapes
Engagements are custom-scoped to the family's situation. Most begin with an initial conversation, move to a defined scope with a fixed fee, and end with a documented deliverable.
6–12 weeks
Discovery & architecture
For families forming a new family office or undertaking a major restructure. Output: documented architecture, recommended partners, operating model.
4–8 weeks
Foundation strategy
For families establishing a new foundation or restructuring an existing one. Output: mission, governance documents, grantmaking framework.
6–12 weeks
Partner selection
Evaluating existing advisor, custody, legal, or tax relationships. Output: structured comparison, recommendation, transition facilitation.
3–9 months
Transition design
Generational shift, founder transition, or major business sale. Output: transition plan, governance changes, next-generation involvement framework.
Recurring
Advisory council facilitation
For families with an established advisory council. DAG facilitates the council's work, manages meeting rhythms, integrates outputs into family office operations.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Question 01 of 06
How is consulting different from wealth management?
Wealth management is the ongoing oversight of the family's assets, advisors, and reporting. Consulting is the strategic work that designs or restructures the systems wealth management runs on. Consulting tends to be project-based with defined scopes; wealth management is ongoing. Many families use both, often sequentially.
Next step
Start with a scoping conversation.
The family describes the current state and the trigger that brought them in. DAG describes how a structured engagement around that trigger typically runs. The decision to engage comes after.