Providing the right investment advice for your charitable cause
Investment Consulting for Charities
Charitable Investing
We’re motivated to redefine how charities can access what they need and to provide services that we believe will improve the outcomes for charities. Our aim is to help charities succeed with their missions.
Broadstone’s team of high quality specialists provide a full spectrum of investment advice to pension schemes, employers, charities, and non-profit organisations. Every charity is unique, so we provide advice on charitable investments with a personal and bespoke approach.
Our investment team offer tailored advice to help charities, endowment funds and not-for-profit organisations to deliver their objectives and meet all of their requirements, whether in relation to ethical investing, cashflow, or meeting funding requirements.
Charity Investment Governance Principles (CIGP) Series
Join Rachel Titchen (Charities and Investment Director) with special guest Gail Cunningham (CIGP Lead Consultant) for an 8-part series to discuss how Charity Boards and Finance teams can begin implementing these Principles, what timeframes these should be considered over and how they may be dealt with slightly differently for smaller organisations.
These Principles have been created by Charities, with the support of many stakeholders. The steering group for the project included the Charity Finance Group (who have hosted the project), NCVO, WCVA, ACF and the Charities Responsible Investment Network.
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Episode 5 – Decision-making, Risk & Control
Rachel Titchen and Gail Cunningham explore the fourth principle on Decision-making, Risk and Control. This principle explores how taking advice on investments is a requirement as set out in the CC14 guidance and the ways trustees should record their decisions when they are being made. The Charity Investment Consulting Partnership’s Trustee guide to accessing Investment Advice is also linked to this principle. One of the key areas of focus in this principle is around setting and publishing your investment policy and how this policy should be clear and complete.
Episode 4 – Integrity
In this episode Rachel Titchen and Gail Cunningham move onto the third principle – Integrity. This principles has a lot of focus on how investments can potentially create reputational risks and how this can be mitigated. There are also a lot of opportunities to further a charity’s purpose through the use of investments, this principle explains how trustees can have more confidence in this decision and can formalize the decision making process.
Episode 3 - Leadership
Rachel Titchen and Gail Cunningham have moved on to the second principle – Leadership. In this principle, they explore how to adopt a delegation framework that best aligns the charity’s investment to their purpose. There’s a focus on understanding that all trustees are jointly responsible for the decisions made around investments and that in some cases it might be appropriate to create investment sub-committees and/or professional providers to support the Trustees.
Episode 2 - Purpose of Investments
Rachel Titchen and Gail Cunningham start looking at the first Principle from the CIGP – Purpose of Investments. Here the focus is on ensuring that charities use their investments to benefit the charity’s purpose. The focus here is given to the objectives of the investments and what they are being used to achieve.
Episode 1 - Using the Principles
Rachel Titchen and Gail Cunningham start the series by exploring the CIGPs and how Trustees and Finance teams should use these principles in practice. The episode covers who the principles have been designed for and what timeframe they are expected to be included in charity practice. Rachel and Gail also explore how difference size charities might want to focus on these principles in different ways.
The Broadstone Approach
Our three pillars that define how we work in this sector
Inclusivity
We believe that all charities, no matter the size, deserve access to reliable, independent investment advice. Regardless of your charity’s size or investment goals, we ensure that you have access to high quality and trustworthy investment advice and support. No matter where you are on your investment journey – we can work with you.
An extension of your team
Our flexible approach to non-profit investment advice allows us to offer you the right guidance in the right way. There are a lot of considerations when it comes to charity investments, and this is why clear communication between stakeholders is invaluable. Our professionals provide your team with the tools and investment advice they need to make informed decisions.
Within our model, we want to create longstanding trusted advisory roles and the best way to do this is to collaborate with you and support the Trustee Board and Finance Team through their investment decisions.
Mission-aligned investments
A difference can be made if charities in the UK invest for impact and use their capital to target their missions. So, our first step is to provide education and help Trustees understand what options are available.
By working with your investment committee, we can help you to recognise how your investments are being used to help the causes that you care about and identify any further opportunities that are available to you.
As a trusted adviser to organisations and their pension schemes that operate in the charity sector, we have already demonstrated a passion and skill for helping those investing for good.
Choosing Broadstone for Your Charity Investment Needs
Our primary objective is to fully understand and then consistently meet our clients’ needs. We provide independent investment advice, and always look to tailor solutions to you, your individual needs and the charity’s ultimate mission.
“We want to help. We’re driven by a deep passion to help a sector that is working so hard to do good. Ensuring that our clients have clear objectives and a mission aligned investment strategy that reflects their specific beliefs and preferences is at the heart of our approach.”
We have advocated the need for further clarity to be given to trustees on investing charity money, and the latest guidance from the Charity Commission helpfully covers this in detail. Fundamentally focusing on the difference between mission aligned and financial investment objectives has given Trustees a real ability to affect change through their investment strategies.
We’re keen to help you explore what the right objectives for your charity or endowment might be.
Frequently Asked Questions
Every charity will have unique needs and aspirations – and it can sometimes be hard to know where to start when considering ethical investment.
I’m new to charity investment – how can I ensure that I meet our financial objectives?
The first step to investing includes creating a unique Investment Policy (and often Ethical Investment Statement alongside). Setting your objectives and writing them down is the first step to understanding how you can meet the objectives.
An Investment Beliefs session is a hugely beneficial tool to help all the stakeholders (most often the Trustees or investment committee and the Finance team) discuss and record the objectives of the charitable assets. During this process, it is helpful to set out your priorities and identify any missions that could be met through the invested assets, and also understand the fundamentals of the charity better. Such as the cashflow needs over different time frames.
How often should we review our investment portfolio?
The Charity Commission guidance states “If you have appointed an investment manager for your charity, you should regularly review the service that they provide. This should happen independently of the manager.”
We believe that the performance, both financial and social, should be reviewed at each finance committee meeting. This doesn’t have to be onerous, a simple governance report will easily comply with this requirement.
The investment objectives should be assessed against the charitable objectives whenever these are updated. The Trustees are responsible for ensuring the strategy remains appropriate and that the managers are executing the portfolio in line with those objectives. A review or at least sense check should be carried out ideally at least every 3 years to ensure the objectives are still being met.
How can we make sure that any investments meet our goals and align with the charity’s mission?
Ensuring that both your advisers and your managers truly understand the social impact the charity wants to unlock through it’s investments make a real difference here. This is something we believe is hugely powerful and we’re looking forward to working with more clients who want to update their Investment Policy to reflect their growing confidence to invest for social impact as well as financial returns.
Investing in a portfolio of assets that align to these objectives and report well on their impact is the easiest way to ensure alignment with your goals.
How will you keep our Trustees and Finance team in the loop?
Our style is to engage with you, and support your charity, in the same way that you expect your Trustees to. We are proactive and will come to your team when we think there’s something you should be aware of. We champion long term relationships and believe the best way to ensure success is to have good communication and clear channels to make decisions. We can help you put the right processes in place and are just as happy to help the Finance team with technical details as we are to help the Trustees with the strategic decisions!
