commonfund forum | Articles

Insights from Institutionally-Related Foundations

Last month at Commonfund Forum 2025, we convened senior leaders of institutionally-related foundations (IRFs) to discuss trends among their institutions and peers uncovered in the FY2024...
commonfund forum | Articles

Portfolio Construction in the Era of the Mag 7

How do you build your U.S. equities allocation when a handful of stocks account for more than half of the S&P 500’s return? The aptly named Magnificent 7 stocks (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta...
commonfund forum | Articles

Governance Lessons from Commonfund Benchmark Studies

Commonfund has been partnering to produce industry insights and thought leadership across the nonprofit institutional investor space for decades. Central to these efforts have been benchmark studies...
commonfund forum | Articles

Tour de World: Global Equity Investing Now

Better valuations. Innovation hotspots. Opportunities to add value. Geopolitical tensions. Debt burdens. Trade imbalances. Equity investing outside the U.S. holds its attractions—and risks. A report...
commonfund forum | Articles

How to Implement ESG at Your Institution

The following has been adapted from a presentation delivered at Commonfund Forum 2023. The presenters were Rachel Stavola Clivaz, Associate Director, and Anthony Peretore, Managing Director,...
commonfund forum | Articles

Hedge Funds: Is Now Their Time to Shine?

Diversification may be underappreciated when both equity and fixed income allocations have been broadly positive. With both these allocations facing significant and potentially long-lasting...
commonfund forum | Articles

Dynamic Workforce = Dynamic Portfolios

The Surprising Outcomes When Diverse Groups and Homogeneous Groups Tackle the Same Problem In late 2018, Commonfund established a Diversity Office with the objective of benefiting from the strengths...
commonfund forum | Articles

The Global Economy and the Return of Risk

How to think about tariffs, deficits, valuations, leverage, growth and other issues What signals should institutions be mindful of as they make portfolio decisions in the current environment? A panel...
commonfund forum | Articles

Diversity and Emerging Managers

The benefits of diversity are widely recognized in the work place and among educational institutions and other nonprofits. Yet, the concept of investment management firms that are minority owned and...
commonfund forum | Articles

Should Investors Be Concerned with ESG Investing

The subject of ESG, or investing in accord with environmental, social and governance principles, arose in several sessions at Commonfund Forum 2018. One session, in particular, was devoted to the...
commonfund forum | Articles

CIO Roundtable: Is the Endowment Model a Crowded Trade?

Stuck in the past or ever-evolving? The endowment model gets a hard look eight years into the current market cycle. With core tenets of the endowment model seemingly under stress for the last several...
commonfund forum | Articles

What’s Next for Cash Investors?

In the static low-rate environment of recent years, it seemed as though there was no “what’s next” for cash. Today, that has changed, as there are major forces reshaping the regulatory and interest...
commonfund forum | Articles

The Big Picture: Integrating Investments, Finance and Development

Most things function a lot better when all the moving parts work together—nonprofit institutions included. The synergies afforded by collaboration across organizational boundaries may be the most...
commonfund forum | Articles

Evolving Challenges in Nonprofit Governance

Commonfund recently convened an expert panel moderated by Myra Drucker (standing, left), Chair of the Board, TrustedPeer Inc. and former chair of the Commonfund Board of Trustees. The roundtable...