Endowments and Foundations - Articles & White Papers

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%…

How universities are tackling the fossil-fuel investment debate. As awareness of climate change has grown in recent years, investing in fossil fuels has become an increasingly contentious issue. Student groups, in particular, have voiced their opposition to investments made on behalf of their establishments that they deem…

The focus of this paper is on endowments and foundations that aim to maintain intergenerational equity. In these cases, the investment asset base, or corpus, is typically meant to last forever. At the same time, it is expected to generate substantial and reliable early income to support the ongoing operations and/or grant…

We investigate the role of different spending rules in a dynamic asset allocation model for university endowment funds. In particular, we consider the fixed consumption-wealth ratio (CW) rule and the hybrid rule which smoothes spending over time. We derive the optimal portfolios under these two strategies and compare them…

The purpose of this white paper is to encourage conversation about the societal and financial benefits of clean energy investments and explore the barriers to such investments. University endowments have over $528 billion in assets, the ability to make illiquid investments, and long-term investment horizons. They are…

Investment Consultants can play a central role incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into an endowment’s investment strategy.Growing investor demand for portfolios that integrate ESG factors has spurred many investment consultants to work toward expanding their knowledge and use of ESG strategies.…

This document is a primer to provide: (1) Strategic questions to consider. (2) Background and an overview of integrating sustainability factors for investment returns and a healthy, just,and sustainable society. (3) The status and trends in sustainable investing for college and university endowments. (4) A brainstorming list…

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?

The estimation of risk factors and their replication through mimicking portfolios are of critical importance for academics and practitioners in finance. We propose a general optimization framework to construct macro factor mimicking portfolios that encompasses existing portfolio mimicking approaches, such as two-pass cross-…

Increasingly, college and university endowments are exploring and implementing strategies for endowment portfolios to more closely align their investments with institutional mission and sustainability goals. One strategy to do so is to invest with a gender lens—investing for financial return while promoting gender diversity…

This pilot research study assesses the annualised impact performance of direct impact investments in affordable housing. It addresses two sets of questions: (1) Feasibility: Is it possible to aggregate and compare impact performance data to generate insights? (2) Results: If so what social and environmental results are…

This briefing paper will focus on one clean energy investment opportunity: how to most effectively enable endowments to make investments in solar projects. It will provide guidance on three main approaches endowments can utilize to invest in solar: allocating capital across traditional asset classes in the investment…

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…

Each issue of The Skorina Letter explores how the world’s most accomplished asset managers think and invest. Insights and commentary come from clients of Charles Skorina & Company – board members, CEOs, chief investment officers – and the global investment community within which the firm works as executive search…

For the top endowments, these and other innovative portfolio decisions have created great, long-term alpha versus a global balanced benchmark with 70% stocks/30% bonds. Since asset allocation plays a large role in determining portfolio returns, it is interesting to compare how beta (or index fund) portfolios have compared…

Increasingly, endowments are exploring and implementing strategies for more closely aligning investment portfolios with institutional mission and sustainability goals.This Roadmap guides investors through key steps toward creating intentionally designed endowments — those that look to align investment practices with…

Many plan administrators may not realize that there are investment options suitable for retirement plans that use sustainable and ESG (environment, social, governance) criteria in the investment process. Adding these types of funds to the plan option menu is a way to give all members of the academic community the ability to…

Colleges and Universities have been creating student-managed funds to offer their students real-world experience in financial investment analysis and portfolio management for several years. Student-Managed Funds can be designed in several ways, and there is growing interest in how new and existing funds address…

This overview is intended to provide nonprofit investment fiduciaries with an overview of how industry leaders are seeing fiduciary duty principles as a guide to alignment of investment practices with their nonprofit's mission goals.

Endowments that wish to understand how and if potential managers address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors through proxy voting and shareholder engagement can leverage the Request for Proposals (RFP), investment manager selection, and monitoring processes to learn more about manager expertise and approaches…