Endowment Radar is a methodology that Cambridge Associates developed to visually evaluate the endowment’s role in the college and university enterprise. The four components of Endowment Radar measure the endowment’s role in supporting the annual budget (Endowment Dependence), pricing strategy (Endowment Support-to-Financial Aid), balance sheet health (Endowment-to-Debt), and financial sustainability (Net Flow Rate). Our 2022 […]
March 2023
Overview Of the 144 Cambridge Associates clients that responded to the 2022 survey, 93 reported engaging in sustainable and impact investing (65%)—up 4 percentage points relative to 2020 and a significant increase of 29 percentage points relative to our 2018 survey results. Foundation and college & university respondents have the highest rates of integration of […]
January 2023
An increasing number of institutions and families are electing to spend down their assets during a limited time period. Why? Some causes—such as climate justice—feel urgent to donors and they respond with more immediate action. Other donors believe greater financial support today through a spend-down fund compounds their impact, leading to better outcomes in totality compared to providing […]
January 2023
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) included substantial relief funds for the most troubled US multiemployer pension plans through its Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program. The SFA program was created to help seriously underfunded multiemployer pension plans maintain solvency through 2051. Multiemployer pension plans receiving SFA funds now have a unique opportunity to […]
November 2022
Where Do We Start? An institution considering initiating or adding to a mission-aligned investing strategy must first define its objectives. Next, it should evaluate the available approaches and tools on portfolio structure, impact, and performance expectations. Any planned changes must be balanced with the need to continue support for ongoing operations and grantmaking activities. Drawing […]
November 2022
Most defined benefit plans—including public, multi-employer, and even frozen corporate plans—can benefit from private investment (PI) strategies. It is fairly common knowledge that private investments offer important value in the form of increased expected investment returns, and that they can be instrumental in improving funded status and achieving other plan goals. Despite this, many plan […]
September 2022
In the second of our two-part series on philanthropy and sustainable investing, we take a closer look at portfolio implementation best practices for families. In doing so, we outline how families may wish to identify opportunities within sustainable and impact investing (SII) themes. We discuss the broad opportunity set, how to construct and then actively […]
August 2022
In engaging with our family clients around the world, we are often asked for views on two related topics – how to think about philanthropy versus impact investing and how to best implement a socially and/or environmentally impactful investment strategy. Whilst common themes transcend these topics, each is distinct, and, as such, we will outline […]
August 2022