Endowments and Foundations - Articles & White Papers
Institutional research and articles covering investing at university endowments, foundations, non-profits and charities. These papers will be of particular interest to university endowment CIOs and other senior endowment investment management staff. A number of white papers examine endowment asset allocation - examining the so-called "endowment model" pioneered by the Harvard and Yale university endowments, represented by a well-diversified portfolio with a relatively high asset allocation to alternative investments. Other popular papers examine trends in university endowment investing and other drivers of endowment asset allocation....
Other topics of inveterest to endowment CIOs include university endowment investment performance and the potential for endowment investments to impact the world positively, investing according to an ESG or SRI philosophy. A key challenge for university endowments, foundations and charities is to withdraw cash in a sustainable manner, and a number of reports look at sustainable "withdrawal rates". A number of broader investment concepts are considered from an endowment/foundation perspective, such as the outsourced chief investment officer (O CIO) model, risk management and active equity investment. Further research articles and surveys in this section cover issues related to endowment investment performance, investment risk tolerance, and strategies for nonprofit institutional investors. This endowment investing topics tends to be followed not just by university endowment CIOs and senior investment staff, but also by those who are seeking to market investment products to endowment funds.
There is now a critical mass of investors who recognize that issues of equity and environmental impact are central to the success of businesses and the long-term health of the economy as a whole. Endowments and foundations, charged with stewarding resources in the public interest over the long term, are increasingly…
The Asset Owner 100 is a new Thinking Ahead Institute study which gathers data on the total assets of the top 100 asset owners around the world. The study includes data on pension funds, outsourced CIOs (OCIOs), sovereign wealth funds, endowments and foundations. The top 20 funds total US$10.55 trillion and represent 55.5%…
Sustainable investing can help organizations align their investments with their values while still earning potentially strong returns. Such strategies may provide an edge for attracting donor dollars and help family‑office principals engage with socially minded individuals, suggests Wellington Management..
We present the historical weights, allocation as of month-end December 2018, and historical performance to the replication portfolio that was introduced in our AIAR publication Volume 6 Issue 1.
At the start of every year, foundation investment committees examine a number of portfolio optimizations to arrive at a CPI+5% return portfolio. The inflation term ensures that the corpus of the fund remains intact, and 5% covers the average annual distribution requirement. But is that the whole story?
As the calls for responsible investing grow, universities will be asked about their endowments’ investment policies regarding impact investing, wherein endowments seek opportunities that provide investment returns and social impact. A common concern for the investment committees, however, is how to incorporate impact…
