ECF’s endowment management program is comprehensive, with the full range of services necessary for effective management. The benefits of this comprehensive approach include:
- Episcopal Insight – Like you, we are an Episcopal organization, and we understand the faith that underpins your work. We share your care for your congregation and community and your concern for future mission and ministry. Members of our staff have experience as lay leaders in our churches and are familiar with church governance and decision making.
- Guidance Grounded in Best Practice – We work together with you, listening and learning, to clarify strategic goals and shape investment plans that match your needs with up-to-date investment thinking. We offer guidance grounded in best practice from our 25 years of serving the endowment management needs of Episcopal organizations across the country, and we provide perspectives from peers.
- Investment Expertise – We have teamed up with State Street Global Advisors to provide investment management services, combining in our endowment management program the Episcopal insight of ECF with the investment expertise of one of the world’s largest managers of institutional funds.
- Fiduciary Responsibility – ECF and State Street Global Advisors assume fiduciary responsibility for the investment management of client funds, an especially important benefit for busy church staff and volunteer leaders.
- Lay Leader Empowerment – We empower leaders to oversee their organization’s endowment and investment funds. We provide sample documents, advise on best practices, and encourage dialogue on how to use funds to the greatest effect. We help you fulfill your legal responsibilities and make good decisions for the future of your organization.
How can we help you make the greatest possible impact on your community?
- Exceptional Client Service – Responsiveness to our clients is at the heart of our program. As a mission-based organization we focus on helping you. Our team-based approach to serving clients means you benefit from the expertise of all of our staff members and their experience in endowment policy creation, investment research and strategy, church development and fundraising, and more.
- Investment Strategies Crafted for Episcopal Organizations – We offer several investment strategies suitable for endowment and investment funds, including socially responsible options. Knowing that the investment goals of our clients may vary, we work with you to discover the investment strategy that will meet your goals, including, as needed, shorter-term portfolios.
- Integration of Responsible Investment Considerations – We provide insight and guidance to Episcopal organizations considering how to engage in Christian stewardship and responsibility through their investment portfolios. Our investment strategies include options that consider environmental, social and governance issues, as well as options that benefit from an asset stewardship approach to corporate engagement and proxy voting.
- Advice on Growing Your Endowment – At ECF, we know that endowments can grow incrementally through investment returns but exponentially through planned giving and other new gifts. We can help you establish and sustain an endowment giving program that makes meaningful gifts possible.
- Support for Organizational Transformation – In this time of great change, endowment funds can be a source of both stability and innovation. Our endowment management team can explore and explain how your endowment and investment funds could help you respond to the changing needs of your organization.
Please contact us for more information. We would be pleased to talk with you about how we can work together.
Anne Richardson