Agenda - Day 2

Gain insight into today’s sessions so you can get the most out of your conference experience and maximize your value.

Develop a strategic plan with a supporting policy to formalize your investment process. Perfect your plans to identify high-growth opportunities and invest using fewer resources. Create a roadmap to:

• Identify gaps in your capacity and knowledge and determine how you can utilize volunteers to reduce resource consumption.
• Increase your standardization to clearly define and achieve your goals.
• Align your investment process with your mission values.

Advance your policy standardization to reduce resource consumption and improve investment success.

As a C-Suite, your ability to architect a strong leadership team and governance structure is pivotal, not just for today’s operations, but for the long-term strength and sustainability of your foundation. Elevate your organization’s endowment, increase mission-aligned impact, and leave a legacy of growth and resilience by:

• Aligning strategic leadership and governance to drive unified progress toward long-term objectives.
• Positioning your foundation as a catalyst for systemic change by fostering strategic partnerships and cross-sector alliances.
• Leveraging the expertise of top-tier external investment managers to protect and grow purchasing power, ensuring financial resilience.

Build and empower a high-functioning team that shares your vision and executes with excellence.

Outsourcing the CIO role is increasingly popular as endowments and foundations seek sophisticated investment expertise to maximize the value of their investments. By shifting some authority for investment decisions to external providers, organizations can ease the challenge of balancing fiduciary responsibilities with investment management. Develop a blueprint to:

• Select the right third-party advisor to partner with.
• Implement top approaches for smooth execution.
• Identify key ingredients for a successful OCIO program.

Optimize your outsourced CIO program by focusing on clear communication, governance structures, and essential elements that contribute to a thriving investment strategy.

Roundtable 1: Assets Under Management of <$5M

Meet with your peers to understand how to mitigate the unique challenges you face, such as labour shortages, resource allocation, governance frameworks, due diligence, and more.

• Labour Shortages: How to do more with fewer people.
• Resource Constraints: Navigate financial markets while keeping costs down.
• Frameworks: Build structured plans to help reduce the due diligence required.

Roundtable 2: Assets Under Management of $5M – $550M

As foundations get larger, increased engagement between your managers, OCIOs, RIAs, and investment committee is essential to ensuring that due diligence and risk management are carried out effectively. Join your colleagues to collaborate on solutions to these issues.

• Regulatory Compliance: Assess the new disbursement quotas.
• Investment Styles: Dissect in-house vs. OCIO set-ups.
• ESG Investing: Review the latest sustainable investment trends.

Roundtable 3: Assets Under Management of $550M+

As larger foundations become more established with your investment committees and staff, you need a more sophisticated understanding of investments. Grasp the nature of each asset class, so you can contribute to your investment success as a foundation.

• Asset Allocation: Stress test each asset class and your total portfolio.
• Wealth Preservation: Inflation-proof your investments.
• Risk Management: Identify previously hidden risks to protect your assets.

Donors, alumni, and other stakeholders increasingly expect foundations and endowments to reflect specific ethical or social values in their investment strategies, such as divesting from fossil fuels, promoting racial equity, and supporting gender inclusion. Adopt best practices to:

• Make difficult decisions, as some of these investments may not align with traditional risk-return models.
• Evaluate the potential trade-offs between aligning with stakeholder values and maintaining traditional risk-return profiles, ensuring informed decision-making.
• Balance ethical considerations with financial performance, allowing foundations to meet stakeholder expectations without sacrificing returns.

Improve your investment approach to stakeholders by fostering transparency and building trust while addressing their concerns.

Effective impact investing requires more than capital, it demands shared vision, strategic alignment, and trust among diverse partners. Co-create successful outcomes through deeper collaboration in social finance models, including social impact bonds and pay-for-success programs by:

• Bridging the gap between impact goals and financial returns by setting shared success criteria across partners.
• Engaging policy makers, community stakeholders, and investors with different mandates and time horizons.
• Designing social impact transactions that account for diverse motivations, from measurable outcomes to return on investment.
• Ensuring inclusive investment models that center community voice and benefit underserved populations.

Structure collaborative deals that are both financially sustainable and socially transformative.

Recent updates to Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) regulations are reshaping how foundations approach their granting strategies. Navigate through current disbursement quota (DQ) rules, including the increased minimum spending requirements and new opportunities and compliance risks related to granting to non-qualified donees by:

• Uncovering what latest CRA changes mean for your annual spending obligations and how they affect your overall endowment strategy.
• Getting clarity on new rules that allow granting to non-qualified donees, including due diligence requirements, documentation standards, and risk mitigation.
• Discover how smaller organizations can meet DQ requirements without overextending resources, including options for collaborative granting and policy updates.

Explore what may be coming next from the CRA and how your foundation can prepare for continued regulatory shifts in the charitable landscape.

With market volatility and inflationary pressures challenging traditional portfolios, endowments and foundations are increasingly turning to alternative investments to meet their financial and mission-driven goals. Align your alternatives with your organization’s risk tolerance, liquidity needs, and long-term vision by:

• Evaluating the strengths and limitations of private equity, real assets, hedge funds, and other alternative strategies
• Optimizing your asset mix by striking the right balance between traditional investments and alternatives
• Build smarter partnerships with GPs and service providers to improve transparency, alignment, and outcomes

Build clear framework for integrating alternatives into your portfolio and making them work for your mission.

• Source invaluable insights and experience the next level of institutional investment innovation firsthand.
• Connect one-on-one with leading asset managers to overcome investment hurdles.
• Brainstorm solutions and gain new perspectives and ideas.

Beyond the initial selection process, the real value in working with external managers lies in building strong, aligned, and performance-driven partnerships. Move beyond transactional relationships to create enduring, mission-aligned collaborations with money managers by:

• Developing long-term manager relationships that reflect your organization’s values and goals
• Engaging managers in strategic conversations around impact, transparency, and accountability
• Establishing governance practices that promote consistent communication, performance tracking, and re-evaluation when needed
• Identifying red flags and pivot when a manager no longer aligns with your strategy

Optimize existing manager relationships and ensure they remain an asset, not a liability to your portfolio and mission.

Review the key solutions and takeaways from the conference. Source a summary of action points to implement in your work.