The NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments (NCSE) for fiscal year 2023 marks the 50th consecutive year that NACUBO has published a Study of the endowments of institutions of higher learning. It would not be an overstatement to say that the Study chronicled five decades of unparalleled change. The investment industry and endowment management have…

This Study analyzes policies, practices and attitudes with respect to responsible investing among 186 U.S. private and public/community foundations. These respondents comprised 52 private/independent foundations, 49 private/family foundations, eight public foundations and 77 community foundations, together representing a total of $39.7 billion in…

For well more than a decade, the "endowment model" of investing has been synonymous with increasing allocations to alternative investment strategies, defined largely as hedge funds, private real estate, private equity and venture capital and other, generally less liquid or illiquid strategies compared to public markets. This trend…

Thoughtful investment professionals continue to debate whether a portfolio's long-term performance can be enhanced by including environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in the security selection process, but responsible investing is more than a passing trend. The terms socially-responsible investing, mission-related investing,…

The Commonfund Study of Responsible Investing analyzes policies, practices and attitudes with respect to responsible investing among 200 U.S. colleges and universities, constituting 24.0 percent of the 832 institutions that participated in the 2014 National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)-Commonfund Study of…

A phenomenon with far-reaching effects on nonprofit investment management and governance has become a little-noticed yet powerful force in boardrooms over the past decade. Despite its wide-ranging implications, this development has largely gone undocumented. This paper seeks to draw attention to this change and its implications, and to trace a…

In the wake of the financial crisis, trustees of many endowed nonprofit institutions realized that their portfolio was riskier than they thought and their own ability to tolerate loss wasn't as strong as they imagined. What can board and investment committee members do to improve their ability to assess their--and their institution's--capacity for…

Outsourcing of investment management is a growing trend among institutional investors. With a broad range of institutions using or exploring the outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) model, portfolio size is no longer the determining factor driving the outsourcing decision. For all but the largest institutional investors--those with deep…

We conduct a longitudinal analysis of the NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments (NCSE) results from 2006-2013 to evaluate if active management is related to higher endowment returns in U.S. equities over time. We also analyze the data to evaluate the endowment characteristics that are related to higher levels of performance over time. We find that…

A large and growing body of work exists on the subject of endowment investing, but the equally important topic of endowment spending is treated less often. While the degree to which endowed institutions depend on their endowment for budgetary support varies widely, the market crisis of 2008-09 demonstrated that failure by the endowment to provide…

This overview of the state of endowment giving comes at a time of urgent need in the nonprofit sector. With market returns uncertain, and spending restraint difficult, the moderate but measurable increase in donations in the previous year invites institutions to consider elevating fund-raising to a more strategic position within the organization.…

Successful investing for long-term funds requires a strategic plan. This is true despite--indeed, because of--the fact that the future is unknowable. The plan must be specific, embodying in concrete terms the best thinking of the board of trustees about the investment pool, its goals and purposes; but it also needs to be sufficiently flexible to…