Not for profit organisations we work with

the objective step for a not-for-profit organization is arguably the key step in the process it's where the key members of that organization need to sit down and really sort of draw out what is their mission goal what is the objective for the entire organization and through that articulation i or we as your investment consultant can start to form that into what are the investment objectives that are likely to provide a good chance of meeting those mission objectives and that's really where you're just you're just tying those different objectives together because if you just look at your investment objectives in isolation who knows whether they're actually going to meet those mission objectives and what the society or the trust or the fund is really looking to achieve almost as important as setting the investment objectives are defining those investment constraints that you need to build that portfolio within and that for a not-for-profit organization comes from and the source of uh cash flows into the fund the spending requirements the liquidity requirements and any esg constraints around their investment policy and defining those up front is key to putting together a portfolio that meets all of their goals be they return risk or just ethical investing for example universities will often have an environmental uh objective but they may have a social objective as well and so you know they're focused not not just uh having a neutral or a positive effect on the environment but they also want to have a have a positive impact on on society on individuals individuals health for instance it is challenging having multiple sets of goals because sometimes they don't always align and and so even over a medium term at before you may construct a portfolio that is ticking your your esg objectives but it might not be taking your performance objectives and vice versa so you need to understand you know what's uh you need to strike a a balance between the two because you can't always have have have both recently we worked closely with an organization who came to us as a new client and you know they had just increased the size of their funds and it was really then that they had the realization that they needed to step through this investment objective process so that they could work out how to invest those assets and the funds were sitting in cash and that is not achieving the long-term goals that they had as a organization and it was really through stepping through that process that and they were able to assess their level of risk and their return targets and therefore in the end invest their portfolio and over time that portfolio will provide much greater returns to their organisation and help them exist for longer into the future