Investment advice and solutions for non-profit organizations

You should carefully review your objectives and beliefs and assess whether they have been changed and how they can be documented. Below are some questions to help guide your review: 

• What is your timeframe for investment?
• What return do you need?
• How much do you need to spend?
• At what point does a market drawdown impact your ability to grow your capital?
• What are your sustainability goals?
• What positive impacts do you want your investments to have?
• Who are your stakeholders and what do they need? For example, is reporting required?

Align investment strategy with your objectives and beliefs. You should consider having a broad opportunity set available across the full range of asset classes. Traditional asset classes may not deliver the same returns in the future.

Consider how your strategy helps you achieve these goals and assess options if your current strategy doesn't help you achieve them. What strategic asset allocation helps you get the sustainable return you need, allows you to spend at the rate you need and fits with your risk appetite? How can you ensure your investments make a positive impact and are sustainable?

Once your objectives and strategy have been defined, you will need to source and allocate to quality managers that are best placed to deliver value for money and help you achieve your goals. Put a pro-active review process in place so that these components can be changed when needed.

• Is your manager serving you well? 
• What do you want to discuss or decide at the board/committee/management team level? 
• Are there other ways to invest that may allow you more time to focus on your core mission? 
• Do you want more control over your investment decisions? 
• Do you have a team in place that has expertise to make investment decisions or does that sit with the board or a committee, do they have the necessary investment expertise?

These services are designed to provide you with the expertise of a specialized investment firm to either make investment decisions for you, or help you make investment decisions on key topics, such as asset allocation and manager selection. These firms have the implementation expertise to execute those decisions quickly, efficiently and in a risk-controlled manner.

By adopting an investment solution, commonly referred to as outsourced CIO, fiduciary management or non-profit outsourced CIO, you have a dedicated team of specialists who understand your organization and its needs and can implement a solution through pooled assets, which provide economies of scale, quality managers and potentially lower fees. 

Private markets such as infrastructure, private equity, private debt and real estate can all offer you important sources of potential returns and income that are less correlated with public equity and bond markets. 

However accessing these opportunities is not as easy. When looking for an investment partner, look for someone with scale, experience, and strong relationships with high quality managers around the world which means they may be well-placed to assist you with building an alternative investment portfolio.

Although it’s extremely difficult to predict where the next economic shock will come from, it’s important that your portfolio be designed to react to market changes including being adequately diversified across asset classes and managers. Achieving the right level of diversification requires expertise. 

Our research and strategy team of more than 200 dedicated professionals¹ constantly monitors our rated fund managers and global financial markets to help you navigate the investment world. 

We have been helping clients across the globe integrate ESG² considerations within their portfolios for more than 25 years. This includes ESG, impact investing and DEI strategies. We can help you construct a portfolio and strategy to support your organization’s wider goals.

From an organizational perspective, we seek to embed sustainability across our advice and implementation work. We are a signatory to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment, and our ESG beliefs and Sustainable Investment Policy are freely available for you to access to understand more about how we operate in this field. 

A commitment to diversity and inclusion is part of our social responsibility as a global company. Diversity is one of our core values and our work in this area centers on a commitment to employees, our clients, and the communities in which we operate. Our ESG Committee oversees diversity and inclusion issues within the company, including monitoring and reporting.

Our sustainable investment team also places a high value on diversity and inclusion when monitoring and selecting managers, so they are well placed to help your organization address this important global issue.