Endowments & Foundations

We have been servicing endowments and foundations for over 20 years and in doing so have become quite familiar with the nuances particular to this area of the non-profit world.  Our endowment and foundation clients range in size from $5 million to $2.0 billion, and together represent approximately one-third of our client base. Foundations and endowments deal with unique issues in terms of spending policies, required returns, appropriate assets, and manager structures. We are experienced at working through these issues, and we understand well the interplay of fundraising, spending policy, and investment results in the maintenance and improvement of any not-for-profit client.

Our extensive work with not-for-profits has created a knowledge base regarding the characteristics of non-compensated volunteer boards. In our experience, board members are generally broadly knowledgeable and by definition well-meaning, but find the exercise of their fiduciary duties complicated because the boards or committees meet infrequently, board members often serve on more than one board, and while the not-for-profit institution may have a time horizon that stretches to perpetuity, board members have terms that do not. This understanding of board dynamics leads us to communicate more intensively with not-for-profit staff members and to find ways to communicate most effectively with the board itself.

We are acutely aware that a not-for-profit is not a pension plan in disguise, and we do not try to fit a pension plan investment structure to a not-for-profit investment structure. For example, we were early proponents of using alternative investments with our not-for-profit clients. We also rank our not-for-profit clients in a separate statistical universe so they can compare their investment performance to other, similar organizations.