Last week we discussed the role of the Finance Committee for nonprofit organizations. Now we’d like to take a quick look at the Investment Committee, which generally has responsibility for overseeing the invested assets of an organization.
An Investment Committee can provide a good check and balance to ensure that restricted or reserved assets are properly stewarded for their intended purpose. The most common type of assets in this category would be your endowment, whether it’s a true endowment or a board restricted fund. An endowment is meant to have some degree of permanence, so it’s important to make sure the assets aren’t depleted just to balance the budget or cover routine expenses. In addition to an endowment, organizations sometimes have an investment account with less formal restrictions, but that operates more like a savings account may to an individual.
The Investment Committee:
- Creates an investment policy to reflect the risk tolerance of the organization and provide guidance on the general portfolio makeup of the account
- Creates a spending policy to clarify how much of the account can be drawn each year and how that amount is determined
- Monitors the performance of the organization’s investments
- Helps moderate the conflicting desires to create a large reserve fund that can provide consistent support to the operating budget through the yearly draws, and the desire to spend the money to balance budgets and expand programming
The following is a sample description of the Investment Committee:
The Investment Committee shall: (a) recommend policies to the Board concerning the management and use of the Corporation’s assets, including its endowment funds; (b) review and assure compliance with such policies that are adopted by the Board; (c) select a professional investment advisor to assist the Committee with periodic evaluations of the investment performance of assets, asset allocation, selection and monitoring of investment managers, and the execution of its responsibilities; (d) select and monitor the performance of investment managers and custodians; (e) for planning and budgeting purposes, recommend a policy for determining the annual transfer of funds from the any endowment funds to the operating or program budget; (f) report to the Board at least annually on the management and performance of endowment assets versus relevant benchmarks; and (g) if authorized by the Board, develop policies and guidelines for, and monitor the performance of, investments in any retirement or pension plan for the benefit of the Corporation’s employees.
The Investment Committee can be a good place for non-board volunteers to serve in an advisory capacity, even as voting members. As part of your board’s overall duty to manage the organization’s finances, though, it is important that any policies created by the Investment Committee be recommended to and approved by the full board.
The Investment Committee can be chaired by a vice chair of the board, or the assistant treasurer, or another officer or board member. However, if your treasurer chairs your Finance Committee, make sure he/she does not also chair the Investment Committee, in order to preserve the value of the checks and balances this committee is meant to create.
If you’re managing a smaller organization and have been reading this blog series, you may have begun to feel that I have suggested more standing committees than you have members of your board. Certainly there is room for overlap in the committee membership, and as I mentioned above, the Investment Committee is a place where non-board member volunteers can be effective. If you do have invested assets, though, I strongly recommend against operating with a combined Finance and Investment Committee. It may be possible to combine the duties of the Investment Committee with the Executive Committee. You may also want to make the Investment Committee a “committee of the whole”, which means your full board would take on these responsibilities.
Creating your investment and spending policies is very important work, and in a future post, we’ll take a look at some of the big questions to be considered when establishing these guidelines for your organization.
