2024 Investments
Generous Rhode Islanders have entrusted their philanthropy to the Rhode Island Foundation for more than a century.
To better our communities and our state requires more than good intentions. It requires good vision, strategy, and discipline. The Foundation deploys prudent, long-term financial strategies to have the most impact today while preserving and growing our endowment for the future.
Investments
The Foundation’s investments are managed by a committee of directors and community members with expertise in the field, along with the support of an investment consultant and the Foundation’s chief financial officer. The Investment Committee establishes the investment policy, selects investment managers, and monitors performance.
For long-term growth and to help minimize volatility, the funds are broadly diversified across asset classes, investment styles, and economies (see figure A).
Our significant scale allows us access to some of the top-performing investment managers in the country, giving us a competitive advantage, and we set exceptionally high performance standards for managers to ensure sustained growth. Our strong long-term endowment returns consistently rank us in the top quartile compared to our community foundation peers, reinforcing our commitment to excellence (see Figure B).
We believe that effectively accessing and managing diverse talent-inclusive of varied backgrounds, age, experience, race, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, and culture-leads to improved outcomes. The Foundation expects investment managers and other third party providers to respect and reflect the priority we place on equity, diversity, inclusion, and access.
Spending Policy
Our spending policy ensures that our endowment continues to grow even as we continue to meet the needs of the day for the people of Rhode Island. The spending policy of 5.5% and 5.75% (including our support fee) calculated over a sixteen-quarter trailing average, allows us to provide a predictable stream of grants to organizations that serve our community, while maintaining a prudent rate of endowment growth. The spending policy is reviewed annually by the Foundation’s board of directors.