July 2, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Grant makers’ endowments plunged by 26 percent last year as the stock market fell to levels not seen in years, according to a new study by the Commonfund Institute.
That was a sharply different picture than in 2007, when endowments grew by 9.9 percent. But foundations’ returns still compared favorably to the overall performance of the market.
The survey was based on data from 221 private foundations and 69 community foundations. The Commonfund Institute is the research arm of Commonfund, which manages nonprofit endowments. Last year’s study surveyed foundations that held assets of at least $50-million, but this year, because so many suffered losses that pushed them below that cutoff, the minimum was $10-million.
The foundations’ returns declined by 3.1 percent when calculated over a three-year period, compared with growth of 10.8 percent a year ago. Five-year returns were still slightly positive (2.2 percent), down from 13 percent the previous year.
Giving Was Up Slightly
Yet the average amount foundations gave away increased slightly, to 5.8 percent from 5.5 percent in 2007.
Forty-five percent of foundations in the survey said they had increased their spending by an average of 20.4 percent — five times the rate of inflation.
“These are institutions that, even in hard times, are cognizant of their missions and their responsibilities, and are trying to keep faith with their program grantees and people who rely on them for support,” said William Jarvis, managing director at the Commonfund Institute.
Mr. Jarvis said the investment performance of foundation endowments was roughly on par with that of the educational organizations and operating charities his group had also surveyed. “The big news is that all types of charities were affected more or less equally by the market downturn in the final quarter of last year,” he said.
But wealthier foundations performed slightly better. Endowments of less than $50-million recorded a decline of 28.5 percent, compared with 24.6 percent for endowments worth more than $1-billion.
Only Fixed Income Grew
Declines were reported across all types of investment categories except for fixed income, which grew by 0.6 percent.
Investments in international equities reported the sharpest drop (down 41 percent), followed by domestic equities (down 36.3 percent). Alternative strategies as a whole posted losses of 16.4 percent. Among them, venture capital and private equity performed the best, with losses of 6.2 percent and 7.8 percent, respectively.
Foundations in the study held, on average, 36 percent of their money in alternative strategies, 27 percent in domestic equities, and 16 percent in fixed income.
Alternative investments grew as a share of foundations’ overall endowments in 2008. But Mr. Jarvis said that foundations’ share of alternative investments, which cannot be sold off as quickly as some other types of assets, would probably decline this year.
The report, “2009 Commonfund Benchmarks Study,” can be ordered free through the Commonfund Web site.
