Agenda

Changes to the disbursement quota will have significant impacts on some foundations. You may need to adjust your operations and investments to meet the increased disbursement quota requirements. There are also new anti-avoidance provisions and transparency requirements enacted as a result of the 2022 Federal Budget that will impact some foundations. Adopt best practices to:

• Assess, and adjust, your current legal documents such as articles and objects, gift agreements, gift acceptance policies, restricted gifts, etc.
• Adjust your investment policy statement
• Change your grant making budget and enhance your grant making systems and capacity
• Potentially disclose additional information to the CRA

Enhance your disbursement policies to remain compliant and enable long-term investments.

Among their multiple challenges, investment committees will be reviewing their membership composition for effective decision making. Improve your governance and policy objectives with new approaches to committee recruitment. Develop a blueprint to:

• Establish a balanced committee
• Rotate membership to introduce new strategies
• Choose and recruit new members for effective decision-making

Transform your member recruitment approaches for successful investment decisions.

Selecting an investment manager that can act in accordance to your organizations investment preferences requires thorough due diligence of the manager’s investment approach and performance, investment process, stock selection and portfolio construction decisions.

• Profile: The extent of the firm’s sustainability practices and its demonstrated commitment to ESG.
• Resources: Whether it is adequately resourced to achieve its ESG related goals.
• Practices: How it implements ESG in a practical sense—or if it otherwise presents a false integration in an effort to attract clients.

Improve your recruitment strategies to stay ahead of a changing landscape and achieve enhanced financial performance.

The new post-Covid world is driving new market behaviour. Organizations are moving away from the traditional thinking of 60/40 split in asset allocation. New asset classes bring new decision-making for your investment committee. Achieve a step-by-step action plan to:

• Introduce your investment committee to new asset classes
• Re-evaluate and review the traditional portfolio
• Drive new performance by successfully adding real estate, private debt and private equity.

Reinvigorate your investment structures to achieve better returns.

Each charity and portfolio are challenged with unique needs and characteristics. Create a customized framework to evaluate strategic asset allocation optimization for your charity’s specific needs. Master the success factors to:

• Establish the impact of the new disbursement quotas
• Prepare in advance of changes
• Position your portfolio to meet the new requirements

Build innovative, tailored strategies to conquer new legislative challenges and enhance your governance.

Impact investing is moving up the agenda. Your organization will want to establish ground rules when measuring financial performance and new investments. How do you measure success before embarking on this new financial journey? Source practical tips to:

• Prepare for your new journey: impact investing, why now?
• Adopt metrics which best measure financial success
• Convert metrics into successful investment decisions

Improve how you measure your financial performance to increase impact investments and achieve your mission.

The prospect of negative bond returns led certain investors to invest in less liquid asset classes; however, more options exist. Protect your investments in an environment with increasing interest rates through alternative approaches to fixed income. Take back to your office strategies to:

• Assess the impact of a rising interest rate environment on your portfolio
• Revisit your long-only strategy
• Determine if long-short funds are the right fit for your organization

Adapt to increasing interest rates to achieve steady fixed income returns.

Investing in farmland as the alternative asset has a sustainable upside. With both real estate and food prices climbing relentlessly, investors may find growth opportunities in actual growth by investing in farms and agribusiness. Develop a blueprint to:

• Consider agriculture to diversify your portfolio
• Add agriculture into your portfolio as an alternative investment
• Invest in agriculture to make a positive environmental impact

Appraise new financial opportunities to tap into your alternative assets.

• Leverage global best practices to implement your net zero commitment
• Align your portfolio with the best available science
• Benefit from change management and thought leadership as part of the ESG journey

• Obtaining an internal mandate for impact investing
• Establishing financial and impact requirements for your endowment
• Integrating impact investing at board and staff level to deliver your strategy

With the world facing inflation numbers that seem to increase daily, and a war in Ukraine that threatens the output of two of the world’s biggest commodity producers, investing in commodities is drawing newfound investor interest. Build your global commodities portfolio to improve your risk management. Source practical tips to:

• Adopt broad, global commodities investments, not just gold and oil
• Build your long-term return potential through active management
• Exploit the opportunities of futures and derivative trading
• Integrate commodities as a means of reducing overall portfolio volatility

Harness the power of global commodities to diversify your long-term investment portfolio.

Although accessing private markets remains difficult for many investors, the asset class is becoming increasingly hard to ignore as it represents a growing share of the opportunity set for investors. Build expertise in private equity opportunities to mitigate your risk. Take back to your office strategies to:

• Evaluate why endowments& foundations should consider investing in private markets now
• Assess endowment & foundation allocation to private markets
• Turn to private markets to boost expectations for future overall portfolio returns

Demystify the private equity market to leverage new opportunities and new returns.