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A Closer Look at Health Conversion Foundations: 2025 CCSF Results
Commonfund, in partnership with the Council on Foundations, recently released the 2025 Council on Foundations–Commonfund Study of Investment of Endowments for Private and Community Foundations (CCSF,...
Your Crisis Playbook Needs Guardrails, Too
Why your governance needs stress-testing before the market does it for you Learn More
Impact and Value-Aligned Investing - Commonfund Coffee Talk
Impact and value-aligned investing The final session in our Commonfund Coffee Talk 2023 series, foundation leaders discuss impact and values-aligned investing, a focus for many foundations and the...
A Winter Wonderland of Books to Warm Your Soul and Inspire Creativity!
Commonfund Institute is excited to share our staff-curated reading list this winter, filled with stories that warm the heart and spark imagination. We extend our warmest wishes for a season filled...
Beyond DEI Toward Reparative Care - Commonfund Coffee Talk
Beyond DEI Toward Reparative Care The second session in our Commonfund Coffee Talk 2023 series, foundation leaders discuss how institutions can use their power, move beyond baseline DEI, and toward...
Key Factors in Asset Allocation Decisions for Endowments
There are several broad subjects that an effective investment policy statement (IPS) should include in its contents and address clearly and specifically as they relate to an endowed institution. This...
Meeting Mission through Investments - Commonfund Coffee Talk
Meeting Mission through Investments The first session in our Commonfund Coffee Talk 2023 series, foundation leaders discuss mission-oriented investment strategies, governance, implementation, and...
The Impact of the Rising Cost of Debt on Private Equity
As the cost of debt on private equity ("PE") has risen and its availability has fallen, deal-making within PE has slowed. PE firms that have historically been overly reliant on leverage in financing...
City of the Big Shoulders: Key Takeaways from our Chicago CIO/CFO Roundtable
For more than 50 years, Commonfund has been working with boards and investment committees to design and implement investment structures that support and maintain intergenerational equity - the...
Is a Hard Landing Priced In? Rates, Credit & Real Estate
Episode 1 Is a hard landing priced into markets? In the debut episode of the Commonfund OCIO podcast, Chief Investment Officer Deborah Spalding and Chief Investment Strategist Kris Kwait break down...
Venture Capital Valuation "Marks": What’s in Your Wallet?
In order to underwrite new commitments in an uncertain market environment, it is critical to normalize valuation methodologies and deeply analyze underlying portfolio companies.
Increasing Use of OCIO Relationships Requires New Governance Considerations
More and more endowments and foundations are entering outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) relationships as long-term mission-aligned investing becomes mired in the complexity of rapidly...
Viewpoint | Analyzing Community Foundation Data by Region
For the 2022 Council on Foundations - Commonfund Study of Foundations, we provided an analysis of community foundation data by five geographic regions. Community foundations lend themselves to this...
Bad News is “Good” for Markets to Close 2023