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Diversity | Insights Blog
Commonfund's Trustee, Dr. David A. Thomas, wins the 62nd Annual HBR McKinsey Award, for co-authoring the article titled "Getting Serious About Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case." The...
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Perspectives | Insights Blog
The theme for Commonfund Forum 2021 was “Transformation.” The objective of the agenda was to deliver timely, useful content on core subjects related to nonprofit endowment and financial management...
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Diversity | Insights Blog
The theme for Commonfund Forum 2021 was “Transformation.” The objective of the agenda was to deliver timely, useful content on core subjects related to nonprofit endowment and financial management...
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Responsible Investing | Insights Blog
Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history. Also known as African American History Month, the...
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Responsible Investing | Articles
Commonfund continues to be committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts throughout the organization. The Commonfund Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Office has created a Diversity,...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
Private capital investors use a particular set of quantitative and qualitative measures to assess performance. While the standard benchmarks used for marketable securities are sometimes applied to...
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Diversity | Insights Blog
Commonfund and Commonfund Institute are very happy to contribute to the new report from Intentional Endowments Network (IEN), “Investing in Racial Equity: A Primer for University & College...
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Diversity | Insights Blog
Across the United States, citizens are gathering to protest the unjust deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery; each of these individuals fell victim to police brutality and racial...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
Risk surrounds us, and for investment fiduciaries it is inescapable if meaningful real returns are to be sought. While risk and return constitute the axes upon which investment portfolios are built,...
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Diversity | Insights Blog
The senseless killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and most recently, George Floyd have once again brought the scourge of racism to the forefront of our nation’s conscience. For many Americans,...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
A strong private capital program requires consistent, diversified investing over time. It is also necessary to have— or obtain externally— resources for research and due diligence before you invest;...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
Are you are considering investing directly with a private equity manager? If you opt to go direct, you will be tasked with selecting, managing and disposing the assets entirely on your own. It may be...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
Many investors today, particularly nonprofits, are seeking to align their investment portfolio with the mission of their organization. Commonfund is a signatory to the PRI and as part of our...
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Private Capital | Articles
Commonfund recently hosted a talk on evolving private capital opportunities in emerging markets. Mark Hoeing, Head of Private Equity, moderated the discussion, while Aaron Miller, Head of Venture...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
During the week of October 14th, 2019 Commonfund Institute hosted our first Forum outside of the United States in Tokyo, Japan. We were honored to be joined by many leading Japanese institutional...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
This is the third blog in a private capital series based on our guide, “Succeed in Private Capital Investing”. You can see the previous blog here. Having determined the size of your private capital...
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Governance And Policy | Articles
Once an institution decides to pursue the outsourced CIO or investment office option, it usually leads to the creation of a request for proposal, or RFP. Considering that the outsourced model is a...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
Building a private capital allocation that makes a difference to your portfolio takes time and dedication. The first step is deciding to make a meaningful allocation to private capital. Then, to...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
Investors have limited control over the returns their portfolios generate. They have more control over their spending. That doesn’t make it easy. Compared to some earlier periods, volatility in the...
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Diversity | Articles
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...
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Perspectives | Insights Blog
As a follow-on to the Commonfund Forum 2019 panel discussion, The Global Economy and the Return of Risk, Richard Fisher, former President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, further...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
The first step of successful private market investing is to learn what private capital is, what its risks and rewards are, and how it differs from public market investing. Private capital provides...
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Perspectives | Insights Blog
Commonfund recently hosted its 21st annual Commonfund Forum in Orlando, Florida. The event brought together institutional investors to engage in a two-day conference to explore cyclical trends and...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
Investors participate in private equity markets for two main reasons: to pursue increased investment return and to add portfolio diversification. Even well-informed investors who are experienced in...
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Responsible Investing | Insights Blog
Over the past year the Commonfund investment teams have undertaken research to identify and isolate a new factor associated with the environmental sustainability of a stock (or a portfolio of...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
Let’s start with a quick recap of Part 1 of this story, which can be boiled down to three main points: Investors often spend too much for market beta, paying “2 and 20” for hedge funds that deliver...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
At the risk of beating a dead horse, hedge funds are not an asset class. This is especially true in the way in which Commonfund selects and constructs its hedge fund portfolios: focusing...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
At Commonfund, we aim to build multi-manager, active risk equity portfolios with a clear objective of consistent outperformance versus passive policy benchmarks. Our approach is to take intentional...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
Rust College: Where tomorrow’s leaders are students today In the wake of the Civil War, Rust College was founded in 1866 to provide an education for newly-freed slaves. Located in Holly Springs,...
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Private Capital | Articles
After a turbulent period, emerging markets have delivered double-digit returns in recent years. Private investments in emerging markets offer a way to diversify beyond the public markets and, in...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
Energetic youth in ‘America’s oldest city’. St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental U.S., having been founded in 1565. Flagler College is...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
Managing investments for missions, ministries and churches. The Missouri Baptist Foundation (MBF) has a noble calling: to support and strengthen the good work of the show me state's ministries,...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
These Buccaneers pursue a different treasure. There was a time when pirates plied the waters of the Caribbean in the pursuit of gold and other treasure. The Buccaneers mascot of the University of...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
The Sky's No Limit. It doesn't issue public weather forecasts, but it tracks weather around the globe. It isn't the national hurricane center, but it studies hurricanes as well as other extreme...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
Hundreds of thousands of plant species are scattered all over the earth, but if the plant world had a headquarters it might be the Fort Worth, Texas home of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
Founded in 1854, The Lincoln University is the nation's oldest degree-granting institutions for persons of African descent. Lincoln is committed to maintaining a nurturing and stimulating environment...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
Active minds changing lives. Right-sized, well balanced, with an extensive range of strong academic programs and some enlightening stats that speak to all of it: Western Washington University (WWU)...
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Private Capital | Articles
Investors often ask about the difference between time-weighted return (“TWR”) and internal rate of return (“IRR”). In general, TWR is used by the investment industry to measure the performance of...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
The dictionary defines a foundation as “an underlying base or support.” Of course, there’s another type of foundation, defined as “funds given for the support of an institution.” Northampton...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
Leveling the Field in the “Tug of War” Between Active and Passive… Active Equity Manager Universal Objective: Outperform the Passive Alternative It’s undeniable that every active equity manager’s...
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Perspectives | Insights Blog
We recently hosted our 19th annual Commonfund Forum in San Antonio Texas. The event brought together institutional investors to engage in a three-day conference to explore cyclical trends and...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
Nonprofit institutions have the distinct advantage of having the longest time horizon of any investors – often perpetuity. This affords an opportunity to consider investments based on secular trends...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
These industries may seem an odd pairing, but both are in the midst of a disruption-led, industry-wide rationalization process. The two industries share in common a historically evolved “bundling”...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
Much has been made of the challenges endowment, foundation and nonprofit investors face in achieving a CPI+ five percent return target. One way to improve the probability of attaining this goal is to...
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Investment Strategy | Insights Blog
As we have undergone the process of re-underwriting all of Commonfund’s equity managers and funds over the last 6 months, we have tackled anew the age old question of how many funds does one...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
These words—to protect, preserve and defend—come from the oath of office sworn by the President of the United States. At the Center for Natural Lands Management (CNLM), they refer to an unwritten but...
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Outsourced CIO | Insights Blog
Finding the right investment governance model for your institution isn’t about size. In the hyper-competitive world of endowment management, something curious happens when the word used to describe...
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Investor Spotlight | Articles
Fast Philly facts: The city is the site of the first library, hospital, medical school, stock exchange and zoo in the U.S. It’s the only World Heritage City in the U.S. William Penn founded the city...
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Governance And Policy | Insights Blog
Most institutional investor discussions and actions regarding global warming have been at two ends of the spectrum: either divest from fossil fuels entirely or remain fully invested. A better...
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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...
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Investment Strategy | Articles
Advances in alternative energy technologies promise to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. Largely, however, they remain just that—a promise. So, where are the opportunities to invest in...
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Governance And Policy | Articles
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...
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Investment Strategy | Articles
Reprinted from Volume 17, Number 1, 2016 of The Journal of Investment Consulting by Mark J.P. Anson Private assets such as private equity and venture capital have long been a thorn in the side of...
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Investment Strategy | Articles
Investors poured $2 trillion into emerging economies between 2009 and 2014. Then prices for a basket of commodities fell—dragging crude oil down to levels not seen in a decade and dashing investors’...
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Investment Strategy | Articles
Asset allocation is still the foundation on which better risk-adjusted returns are built. But asset allocation has changed, along with all the associated tools for pursuing return and managing risk....
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Governance And Policy | Insights Blog
“Outsourced CIO” (or OCIO) is a term that might not be familiar to many. In the past it has been defined as a traditional consulting model in which the process of interviewing potential investment...
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Risk Management | Insights Blog
Our research at Commonfund has found that a 70/30 stock/bond portfolio has north of 99 percent of its risk, as measured by standard deviation, allocated to equities. Thus, portfolio risk typically...
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Risk Management | Insights Blog
Merriam-Webster’s defines risk as the “possibility of loss or injury.” The financial profession — borrowing from Modern Portfolio Theory — uses the standard deviation of a portfolio’s returns to...
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Responsible Investing | Articles
Impact investing is showing growth around the world. According to the most recent J.P. Morgan/Global Impact Investing Network Impact Investor Survey, the number of institutional investors engaging in...
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Perspectives | Articles
On campus, the thinking about operating asset management is changing with the times. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, liquidity was the primary concern on university...
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Governance And Policy | Insights Blog
Generally speaking, Environmental Social and Governance, or ESG for short, is used to describe a group of characteristics that can have a material impact on the long-term success of a company and,...
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Governance And Policy | Articles
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...
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Responsible Investing | Articles
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are a topic for active discussion in board rooms. Here’s an update on Commonfund’s thoughts and actions and how ESG may relate to you. In general,...
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Outsourced CIO | Articles
Why an OCIO that's dedicated to serving nonprofits may be preferable to a general practitioner As the OCIO model has evolved and expanded in recent years, a number of financial providers have entered...
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Risk Management | Articles
Risk management: the process of harnessing risk in pursuit of better investment returns In a broad sense, how should nonprofit institutional investors think about investment risk and risk management?...
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Private Capital | Insights Blog
For reasons unknown, many investors assume that private equity may have lost its edge as a key allocation for their portfolios. This perception, however, may not align with reality. By taking a...
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Investment Strategy | Articles
Today, few OCIOs that serve nonprofits are total institutional partners. Six questions can help you find one who takes a holistic approach. Not long ago, the definition and scope of an “Outsourced...
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Responsible Investing | Articles
Investing according to environmental, social and governance principles is maturing into a distinct discipline. Robust research results dispute the conventional wisdom about performance trade-offs. If...
An Insider's Guide to the Chinese Economy