Investments with Purpose

A Message from our Investment Committee

Welcome! We know that achieving your philanthropic goals requires informed, strategic, and thoughtful investment options. At the Community Foundation, we offer several investment strategies to match your giving goals, making it possible for you to sustain your fund and invest it to maximize impact.

Investing your charitable dollars and being good stewards of our donors’ assets is the cornerstone of our philosophy. We take our commitment and responsibility to you, and to our broader community, very seriously. This page has been created to provide you with clear, transparent information about your investment options, our policies and performance, and our oversight.

Thank you for choosing The Community Foundation as your partner in giving. We look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

 DIVERSITY AND IMPACT IN OUR INVESTMENT STRATEGY

We believe it is important to consider racial and gender diversity in the management of our investment portfolio. SEI shares our commitment to retain a diverse pool of investment managers while achieving our investment objectives. Through the combined investment fund, our fundholders access and benefit from this diversity.

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.

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.

Combined Investment Fund FOR NON-ENDOWED FUNDS

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.

Vanguard Index Funds

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.

Impact Investment

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. Learn more.

Separately Managed Fund – 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. 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.

Please review our investment policy for more information.

This is distributed for general informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal, tax, accounting or investment advice. The information, opinions and views contained herein have not been tailored to the investment objectives of any one individual. Nothing contained herein should be construed as investment advice. Any reference to an investment’s past or potential performance is not and should not be construed as a recommendation or as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit. Any ideas or strategies discussed herein should not be undertaken by any individual without prior consultation with a financial professional for the purpose of assessing whether the ideas or strategies that are discussed are suitable to you based on your own personal financial objectives, needs, and risk tolerance.