“The contract for an OCIO to manage the $450 million endowment at the Nathan Cummings Foundation came up for renewal in 2020.
The foundation had already been working with an OCIO since 2010. In 2017, it began discussing internally, with support from external consultants, whether it could be possible to move its entire endowment into investments that aligned with the foundation’s social and racial justice mission.
The Nathan Cummings Foundation’s board of trustees, which still includes members of the founder’s family, voted unanimously in 2018 to make that move. The vote empowered foundation staff to sort all of its investments into four categories: those that were out of alignment with its mission and values; those that were at least avoiding harm; those that were actively making a positive social impact in some way; and those that were directly contributing to solutions advancing the foundation’s mission and values. The foundation made it a new goal to move all those dollars toward the mission-aligned end of that spectrum.
