At Community Foundation Sonoma County, we believe in the power of connecting people, ideas and resources to benefit all who live here.
One critical component of our mission includes ensuring that all funds are managed with prudent fiduciary oversight and good governance. Donor advised funds, nonprofit funds, corporate and committee advised funds, as well as legacy funds are handled with the utmost care and dedication to support charitable intentions and resources within our community.
In June 2015, the Community Foundation Board of Directors, working with our Investment Advisory Committee and our Investment Consultants at Graystone Consulting implemented a revised investment strategy. The Board and Investment Committee are regularly monitoring performance and fees and making adjustments as needed to ensure long-term optimal stewardship of funds. Our investment strategy encompasses the following principles:
- We believe in diversification. Our portfolio is diversified across global markets, market capitalizations, and industry sectors.
- We believe in the US economy. Our portfolio has a small bias towards US equity, with 60% US equities compared to a world index ratio of 50%. Our fixed income allocation has a 66% allocation to US instruments.
- We believe in efficiency. Our portfolios are implemented with mostly passive vehicles helping us to keep costs low.
- We believe mitigating risk is as important as achieving growth. We are invested in a blended portfolio of 65% equity and 35% fixed income. We limit investments that utilize tactical approaches to a maximum of 15% of the portfolio.
This revised strategy has reduced money manager expenses, decreased volatility, and allowed us to track results that are more in-line with major bench-marking indices.
The economy and capital markets did well in 2016 and we are pleased that we met our objectives. Although we are focused long-term (the Long-Term Pool has a 20-year or full economic cycle time horizon), we are pleased that the 2016 results of this pool were 7.20%.
The long-term health of Sonoma County’s nonprofit community is paramount to our work at the Community Foundation. Providing a service to nonprofits and donors (during and after their lifetime) which allows limited resources to be prudently managed is a big part of our investment in the promise of Sonoma County.
