Monitor Financial Performance and Portfolio Alignment

Aligning the endowment with mission is an iterative process and includes ongoing monitoring of the endowment portfolio in terms of both financial performance and alignment with mission.

1. Measure the Endowment’s Financial Progress

In order to signal their focus on long-term investing, endowments will include a benchmark that matches their endowment's long term financial goals such as an inflation plus spending benchmark.

An intentional endowment may also choose to benchmark financial performance against an index that reflects its investment policy more closely. In addition to the standard broad market benchmarks, many index providers now offer benchmarks that address systemic factors including social inequality and the climate crisis. Some examples include:

 

2. Measure Endowment Alignment with Mission

Endowments can use some of the same tools that were used in the original portfolio assessment to continue to monitor progress in aligning the endowment with the institution’s mission on a regular interval (annual or more frequent). Review those steps and tools for measurement here.

 

3. Use a Comprehensive Portfolio Impact Monitoring Framework

Read IEN’s five-step guide to implementing comprehensive impact management across your portfolio here. The guide points you to resources for learning more about impact management, setting impact goals, selecting the most relevant metrics and collecting data on them, analyzing that data and reporting your findings. Or take a quick look at three examples that are gaining traction with endowments and foundations:

 

Impact Management Norms 

From 2016 to 2018, the Impact Management Project (IMP) convened a Practitioner Community of over 3,000 enterprises and investors to build global consensus on how we measure, improve, and disclose our impacts. The resulting consensus (or “norms”) provide a common logic to help enterprises and investors understand their impacts on people and the planet, so that they can reduce the negative and increase the positive. Impact Frontiers incubated as part of the IMP beginning in 2019, and when the IMP concluded its five-year term in 2021, Impact Frontiers became the steward of the Norms.

Learn about The Impact Management Norms 

Case Studies and Toolkits  

Several case studies, toolkits, and other resources exist to provide guidance on how peers develop, adopt, and apply impact monitoring and management frameworks. Some examples include: 

Impact Ratings for Philanthropy: A Case Study of the UBS Optimus Foundation (Impact Frontiers, 2025)

(Re)Calibrating Feedback Loops: Guidance for Asset Owners and Institutional Investors Assessing the Influence of System-level Investing (The Investment Integration Project, 2023)

A Primer for Applying the Impact Management Norms to a Globally Diversified, Multi-Manager Portfolio (Global Endowment Management, 2018)

The Endowment Impact Benchmark (EIB)

The Endowment Impact Benchmark (EIB) is a sustainable and impact investing assessment, rating and benchmarking framework for endowments and foundations.

EIB Participants receive a rating for their sustainable and impact investing policies and practices, access aggregate data of participating E&Fs, enabling benchmarking of progress against that of their peers, and receive high value feedback and recommendations on improving sustainable investing policies.

Learn more about the EIB.


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