Investment
Strategy
At The Community Foundation, we know that achieving your philanthropic goals requires informed, strategic, and thoughtful investment options.
We offer several investment strategies to match your goals, making it possible for you to sustain your fund and invest it to maximize impact.
Being good stewards of our fundholders’ assets is a cornerstone of our philosophy. We take our commitment and responsibility to our donors, our partners, and to our broader community, very seriously. Our team stands ready to provide clear, transparent information about investment options, our policies and performance, and our oversight.
Community Foundation Investment Options
To optimize your philanthropic investment, you can choose from an array of options to allocate all or part of your fund’s investment.
When making decisions about which of these options is right for you, we encourage you to consider your risk tolerance, grantmaking time horizon, and philanthropic intentions for your fund.
Each fund can have a unique, donor recommended allocation; however, a minimum of 10% cash allocation is required. Each fund is rebalanced at least quarterly to the target allocation recommended by the donor.
If you would like to learn more about any of these investment options or talk to us about reallocating all or part of your fund’s investment, please contact Juliana Mitrojorgji. Changes to the allocation percentages for existing fund advisors can be made quarterly if the request is received at least 15 days prior to quarter end.
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This global balanced fund is the most common investment choice for our donors. This fund will seek long-term growth. Using well-researched, high-quality, and regularly monitored investments, this is a diversified, risk-adjusted portfolio that enables donors to support current and future programmatic work and grantmaking. The Community Foundation has created a highly diversified investment portfolio to ensure financial resources are managed to grow over time for increased philanthropic impact. It will invest in equity, fixed income and alternative investments.
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Non-endowed funds are managed to match a donor’s intent of immediate and sizable grantmaking with an investment objective of moderate growth in the value of the assets and provide sufficient liquidity. Using well-researched, high-quality, and regularly monitored investments, this is a diversified, risk-adjusted portfolio that enables donors to support current and future programmatic work and grantmaking. It will invest in equity and fixed income investments.
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The Community Foundation offers four low-cost index funds. An index fund is a passively managed mutual fund created to closely match the risk and return of the market-weighted index it is attempting to track, such as the S&P 500. The intent is to provide broad market exposure, lower operating expenses (fees), and lower turnover.
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You may allocate a portion of your fund at The Community Foundation toward an impact investing opportunity that is creating and preserving affordable housing in the region. Offered through a partnership with Enterprise Community Loan Fund, Inc., this impact investment is creating a positive social impact along with a financial return by providing financing to organizations assisting in the fight to end homelessness and housing insecurity.
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Maintaining 100% liquidity by investing in cash and cash equivalents is an option for donors. This choice offers the least amount of risk, and the corresponding yield reflects that. This vehicle is usually preferred when immediate or near-term grant recommendations are planned, or in conjunction with any of the other options.
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You have the option to retain your current investment manager or name an external qualified investment advisor to manage your investments, subject to Investment Committee approval. Your Separately Managed Account must maintain a minimum value of $500,000. The Community Foundation will work with the financial advisor to maintain a reasonable asset allocation, manage cash flow needs, and approve changes to the investments within the account.
Investment Oversight
Our investment committee is comprised of seasoned investment and business professionals from our Board of Trustees. With the aid of our OCIO, the committee sets an investment policy, makes strategic and tactical asset allocation decisions, and monitors and evaluates investment performance.
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Jill Landefeld
Investment Committee Chair
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Quanda Allen
Investment Committee Member
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Dr. Monica Goldson
Investment Committee Member
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Lanta Evans-Motte
Investment Committee Member
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Craig Pernick
Investment Committee Member
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David Roodberg
Investment Committee Member
Our Partnership with SEI
The Community Foundation has partnered with SEI, a leading asset manager with 450+ clients worldwide and $330 billion in assets under management.
SEI serves as The Community Foundation’s outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO), functioning as an extension of our staff and Investment Committee, providing world-class investment expertise, and focusing on managing the charitable funds you have entrusted to us.
SEI is a large, global firm that makes significant annual investments in research tools and technology for investment and risk management. Because SEI has taken on full fiduciary accountability for the selection, oversight and replacement of money managers, The Community Foundation Investment Committee is able to focus more time on strategic initiatives, such as asset allocation and overall financial strength.
We are also working with SEI to exercise competent and socially responsible stewardship in how it manages our financial resources by incorporating a “Do No Harm Policy” when deploying assets. Recognizing that our donors and our ability to carry out our mission depend upon a reasonable return on investments, we are committed to avoiding investments which work against our philanthropic goal for a just and equitable Greater Washington region.
Questions?
Contact Florence Mwaura, OCIO at [email protected]
www.seic.com
