Beginning with a brief overview of the Bellagio Forum, its structure, strategy and goals, BFSD Executive Director, Shiroff made special note to point out the untapped potential that foundation’s endowments represented. Breaking down the wall between mission and endowment investment – if just a little bit – could have potentially large and very positive benefits.

After a brief overview of the beginnings and goals for P.R.I.M.E., Jan-Olaf Willums then presented the initial results of the P.R.I.M.E. survey which covered responses from over 25 foundations. The primary conclusions drawn at this stage was that although a topic that has been discussed at board level, there remained a greater desire for action than had taken place or was planned. The major concerns regarding the challenge of aligning asset management with mission is the potential loss of endowment revenue while concurrently recognizing the potential reputational risk of failing to do so. The presentation with detailed charts of the results of the survey can be downloaded here.

Directly addressing the issue of the competitiveness of sustainable asset management, Xavier de Bayser made a direct and clear case that this was misunderstood concern. He presented compelling evidence that demonstrates the equal and often superior performance of sustainably managed funds both against globally recognized benchmarks. Whereas the definition regarding what “sustainable” companies continues to be debated, within the framework of current definitions of best-in-class the argument that sustainable investment is detrimental to returns is clearly false. Xavier’s full presentation can be downloaded here.

The final panelist, Eva Thörnelöf, gave the audience an overview of how the MISTRA Foundation is actively shaping the sustainable asset management issue. They have taken a very close look at the quality of research and the often differing definitions that go into qualifying equities as “sustainable” “best-in-class” and other labels that are used as signs of a identifying exceptional corporate practices. Moreover, MISTRA is also “walking the talk” by investing its entire endowment according to the “lowest level of decency” standards and of it’s 75% take at least some SRI approach. Her presentation can be downloaded here.

Following the presentations and lively debate ensued during which several important points were discussed. Several audience members questioned whether “sustainable asset management” necessarily included an ethical element. Were this the case, they saw definite potential conflicts in how different foundations might address these issues – specifically citing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and nuclear power as two topics on which there are significantly diverging views. Xavier and Sam both responded that the goal of the PRIME is not to tell foundations how to invest, but rather to provide the tools for foundation heads and to engage their boards and asset managers in the process of aligning mission and investment strategies. Clearly each foundation will have to decide on its own ethical guidelines.