Trustee Resources
Disclosed Investment Expenses
Why "Disclosed" Qualifier Foundation Advocate and our related company, FoundationMark, very consciously uses the qualifying term "disclosed" whenever referring to investment expenses for a very simple reason, foundations are supposed to break out their overall expenses and allocate which were attributable to investing and which were for charitable purposes, but we don't … [Read more...] about Disclosed Investment Expenses
The Endowment Model: A Brief Overview
The "endowment" model of investing, often simply referred to as the "Yale" model, after Yale's legendary Chief Investment Officer, David Swenson, who literally wrote the book on multi-asset class investing and is widely credited for Yale's incredible long term investment performance. Many articles, case studies, and academic papers have been written about Yale's extraordinary … [Read more...] about The Endowment Model: A Brief Overview
Is Our Foundation Getting the Most Bang for Our Buck?
There is a core question in managing money that is very difficult to answer, which is How hard is our money working? One hears about taking "calculated risks" or the term "risk adjusted returns" when discussing investment results. Too often the underlying components necessary to evaluate risk aren't disclosed, are difficult to understand, or aren't even measured at all. So risk … [Read more...] about Is Our Foundation Getting the Most Bang for Our Buck?
Accuracy Explainer
How Accurate are the FoundationMark Estimates? After learning that our affiliate, FoundationMark, estimates the investment performance of foundations, the first questions one might ask is how accurate are the estimates? Of course that raises a Catch-22 situation - if foundations reported their performance, you wouldn't need estimates. Fortunately, several large foundations … [Read more...] about Accuracy Explainer