When a nonprofit begins they set out a mission for their community that they want to fulfill over many, many lifetimes. They need a partner that’s going to be there to work with them over the long run. The overwhelming majority of our foundation clients are endowment clients don’t have any full-time staff focused on investments and so our role as an investment consultant is to help them achieve their mission by maximizing their financial resources at CAPTRUST. We really sit on the same side of the table as our endowment and Foundation clients.
We give unbiased advice, we serve as a fiduciary and so we come in and help them make the best decisions that meet their needs and that means bringing a whole level of governance thinking through what the investment strategy is developing investmentpolicy and really thinking through how can they maximize every single dollar that their donors have given them so that they can continue to do more good in the community the depth and breadth of our client base at CAPTRUST for endowments and Foundations is significant. It’s given us a unique opportunity over the years to see many types of organizations and what their struggles have been it’s helped us customize solutions to help work through different.
Problems for small organizations for large endowments for different types of foundations that have very unique objectives with hundreds of billions in assets CAPTRUST really has the ability to invest in depth of resources. And that means specialists in various areas of the practice behind every advisor. There are hundreds of people that are myopically focused on whatever their line of business is to support the advisor. We leverage different departments within our firm that being our vendor analysis team due diligence performance reporting and client services to ensure that our clients are getting the highest quality of service that they can get second in new client comes in.
I work really closely with their service team to make sure that the transition for them to CAPTRUST is smooth. The top priority is understanding what their goals and objectives are so we spend a lot of time up front really trying to dig into what the client needs then based off of those needs and future goals. We put together really individualized plan find the perfect fit.
Over the past few years we’ve continued to accelerate our investment in the endowment and Foundation practice, whether that’s individuals with expertise and planned giving or doing our advised funds or whether it’s the growth of our endowment and Foundation survey. We’ve added staff that are focused exclusively on endowments and Foundations. We’ve improved our access to the Alternatives investment space and really just generally invested in the technology and other resources necessary to bring great outcomes to our clients.
Another really unique thing about CAPTRUST is we have the CAPTRUST Community Foundation, which is a hundred percent employee managed. So we have a board of directors. We have an investment committee. We have a grants committee. So it gives us and the people that you’re interacting with on a day-to-day basis a unique perspective about understanding how a nonprofit works. Most organizations are insome sort of a fundraising mode. They’re looking for more donors and they’re looking to increase the gifts from those donors to help fulfill their mission.
So, how can we help? Well, we can help with different ways to communicate to their donor base giving them access to information about how prudently their Investments are being managed. We can also help organize strategies around more tax-efficient ways of giving. If you’re able to show a donor that you have a Sound Investment program and a great governance structure. Generally that’s going to give them a lot more confidence when they think about donating more money in the future every year.
We survey Endowments and Foundations both clients and non-clients and we take those insights to share with our clients about what peers are doing most importantly what the most successful peers are doing differently than the nonprofit community at large. We ask questions from everything from asset allocation to investment outcomes. But we also talk about governance donor engagement diversity equity and inclusion really the idea is to Garner as much knowledge and resources that we can to share and create a collective experience across our client base.
There have been many trends that have been identified one in particular is on social responsible investing. This is a topic that either donors are bringing up or they’re bored is bringing up and so we can help come in and provide the education and help streamline their Sisters and align their portfolio with their mission. What are we doing that socially responsible. What are our environmental objectives identifying those Trends sharing those with clients having those conversations early have helped us get our clients in shape and address some of the issues that are happening from a social standpoint all across the country since our founding. Our mission has been to serve our clients colleagues and communities unequal footing. And the endowment Foundation practice is a really unique space where all three of those intersect in a meaningful way. Giving back is so deeply embedded in the captchas culture. And I think that’s something that aligns really well with our endowment Foundation clients.
It’s not lost on us that when we help our endowment Foundation clients succeed that they’re able to amplify the good that they’re doing. One of our beliefs is that all foundations and endowments regardless of their size should get world-class investment advice. CAPTRUST we’ve designed our organization to make sure that the same person who’s working on a billion dollar endowment is working on a five million dollar Foundation. By combining deep expertise and Technical topics with deep understanding of what organizations are trying to accomplish we can design investment programs that help organizations continue to make an impact in their community and grow that positive impact over time.
As a nonprofit leader. There are a lot of issues on your plate. You have clients that you’re serving board Dynamics when you’re aligned with an organization like CAPTRUST you can take a breath, you know, that that piece of your responsibilities is taken care of that you’re making good decisions there that there’s Integrity in your process. And so that allows you to focus on other things.