The majority of our endowment (approximately $50 million) is invested in the Core portfolio with the primary goals of preserving capital and earning a sufficient financial return to continue our grantmaking in relative perpetuity. The Core portfolio is governed by our No Buy Guidelines, even though these investments are not entirely in alignment with our mission and values. The bulk of the money is in traditional Wall Street investments invested across all asset classes. That said, we have also made early investments in Microvest, Guayaki, Community Capital Management and Impax New Energy Investors. Originally housed in our Transitional Portfolio, these investments have transitioned to our Core Portfolio where their financial performance and risk profile is on par with their asset class. In this way, we are slowly shifting the Core portfolio toward closer alignment.

Our formal investment policy for the Core Portfolio includes setting a long term horizon of 10 years, limiting risk through diversification amongst a wide range of investments and achieving a 100 percent values-aligned investment portfolio. Our vision is that one day our Core portfolio will be composed entirely of mission-aligned investments that actively work in concert with our grantmaking efforts. We recognize that larger, systemic changes to the economy must occur before this can happen. We believe that our efforts to identify and support socially and environmentally responsible innovative investments will advance this goal.

Within this portfolio, Swift Foundation retains a five percent allocation of United Parcel Service (UPS) legacy stock, the proceeds from which created the foundation in 1999. The foundation continues to act as an active shareholder with UPS in acknowledgement of the family’s former ties with the company.

A note about PRI’s: While Program Related Investments can supplement grants and program costs in meeting the five percent, we do not make PRI’s from our grants budget. Even though a growing segment of our Core and Transitional assets meet the IRS qualifications for PRIs, we only classify some investments as PRIs and again, do not count them as part of our grants payout.