Investment management - Charities

Understanding your charity’s investment objectives, attitude to risk and ethical constraints is central to building the right portfolio for your needs.

Building the right portfolio based on a clear understanding of your needs.

Keeping up to date with the performance of your portfolio and minimising the paperwork.

Helping Trustees, charities and institutions with charitable status to reach their full potential.

We are one of very few investment managers who are able to offer institutional charity investment management from all our offices throughout the UK, Jersey and Ireland.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are changing the investment landscape. We look at how charities are consequently under increasing pressure from stakeholders to draw these considerations into their investment process.

A well thought-out investment policy is essential to achieving your charity’s goals and demonstrating that Trustees have fulfilled their duty of care.

In spite of the best efforts of the regulator, and warnings that ‘past performance is no guide to the future’, trustees continue to put recent strong performance front and centre when picking an investment manager.

Climate change has become a global emergency, with individuals, corporations, charities and policymakers increasingly recognising the urgency of tackling carbon emissions.

The charity sector is undergoing a dramatic changes and the challenges are many and varied.

Charity investors can give themselves a better chance of achieving stable, long-term returns by avoiding a number of common mistakes.

The investment industry is fond of jargon. Deciphering this alphabet soup of acronyms can give the impression that investing is complex and impenetrable

Public confidence in the charitable sector is currently at its lowest level

A number of changes for the charity sector have been put forward by the UK government.

Charities are not immune to fraud. In some instances charities are specifically targeted by criminals due to their perceived lack of controls and heavy reliance on trust based governance.

The question of how much cash to hold may not be as simple as it at first appears. Getting the answer right depends on good governance, a solid understanding of risk – and an awareness of the charity’s legal obligations.

Ethical investors need to be pragmatic and patient and work closely with an experienced investment manager to reflect their ethical views in their portfolios. It can be a long, but ultimately rewarding journey.

A collection of Smith & Williamson's archived charity insight articles.