Governance Is the Top Challenge for 28% of Family Offices, and 65% Limit Next-Generation Involvement: How to Map Warm Paths to the Person Who Decides

A new survey of 206 single-family offices across the Americas, published in the week of 21 October, found that 28% rank governance and decision-making as their single greatest challenge, ahead of target returns at 24%. About 65% report limited or no next-generation involvement in investment decisions, and only 30% describe their governance as highly formalised. For a fund manager, that translates into a practical problem: at many family offices the person who signs is not the person who shapes the decision, and a warm introduction that reaches the wrong person goes nowhere. The steps below are our advice, drawn from the survey's numbers, not from the survey itself.

What the survey says about who decides

Of the 206 offices, 30% describe their governance as highly formalised, 34% as moderately structured, 23% as informal and 13% as still evolving. That makes 36% informal or still evolving, and 64% at least moderately structured. The gap by generation is wide: structured governance (highly or moderately) is 49% at first-generation offices against 70% at second- and third-generation offices. By age of office, 71% of established offices are structured against 60% of newer ones. Fewer than a third have fully implemented succession plans, 54% are planning or building them and 18% have none. We compare these on percentage of offices, not on assets, because the survey does not report governance by capital.

Why this changes the warm path

A warm path works by routing a trusted voice to the decision maker. In a formal office that person is usually a chief investment officer with a committee, and the route runs through peer managers and consultants. In an informal one the decision may sit with a founder, a spouse, a long-standing adviser or an outside lawyer, and the committee, if it exists, may be a conversation over dinner. Mapping the path before you ask for an introduction avoids using up a favour on someone with no influence. Our guide to the warm path to LPs covers the general method; this piece adapts it to family offices. The reasoning here is ours.

Step one: classify the office

Before any outreach, place the office on a simple scale. Is it a first-generation office run by the person who created the wealth, or a second or third generation with a professional team? Does it have a named chief investment officer? Does it publish anything on how it invests? The survey suggests first-generation offices are less likely to have structured governance, so expect a smaller circle of decision makers and a longer personal relationship before any commitment.

Step two: find the adviser layer

When governance is informal, outside advisers carry weight. List the multi-family offices, consultants, private bankers, attorneys and accountants that the office is known to use, using public material only. These are often better introducers than a peer fund manager, because they have the principal's attention. Check that you are not asking an adviser to endorse a fund it has not diligenced; a plain request for advice on how the office likes to be approached is easier to grant.

Step three: map overlapping managers

Offices differ in what they prefer. In the survey, older offices favour co-investments (75%) and newer offices favour secondaries (45%). A manager already on the office's roster, or a co-investor on a deal it has done, is a candidate introducer, in the same way we described when we looked at managers that share LPs. Pair what the office has backed with what you are raising, and lead with the co-investment or secondaries route that fits its age.

Step four: address the next generation separately

With 38% of respondents saying the next generation is more willing to take risk and 22% saying it is more conservative, the younger members of a family may hold a different view from the principal. If you can reach them through a shared school, a portfolio company or an industry event, a short note on how you handle reporting and fees may land well. Do not bypass the principal; use it to understand the family, not to lobby around the decision maker.

A worked example

Suppose you manage a $200 million infrastructure fund and are looking at a second-generation family office with a named chief investment officer. The survey says 30% of offices plan to raise infrastructure allocations, so the topic is live. You find two secondary managers it has backed, one of which you know. You ask that manager for ten minutes on how the office runs diligence, not for a name. If the answer points to an outside consultant, you build a second path through the consultant. Only then do you write to the CIO, with a line about the shared manager and a clear ask.

What not to do

Do not treat survey percentages as evidence about one office, do not guess at family relationships from press coverage, and do not name an individual's relatives or contact details in a note. Check each link with a person before you cite it. Our overview of family offices lists categories to start from.

What to watch next

Watch for the full release of the survey's tables, for the next quarter's family office data in our market view of family office allocations, and for how many offices add a formal committee. FundLinx members can map decision paths into family offices.

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