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Investment solutions for not-for-profit organisations

We work with charities, endowments, and foundations, to build innovative, resilient, and agile portfolios aligned with your mission. Our tailored research, advice, and solutions are designed to help you achieve better investment outcomes while supporting your organisation’s purpose. 

Investing that fits your mission

Each not-for-profit organisation is unique in its mission and approach, and so should be your investment portfolio. Your investments should work to provide long-term growth while reflecting what your organisation stands for. This requires a bespoke approach to investment to help ensure that there are no nasty surprises which could disrupt your mission or damage your organisation's reputation. From strategic advice and research to implementation and direct investments in global securities, we can help deliver customised portfolios tailored to your goals.

Investment considerations for not-for-profit organisations

  • Alignment

    As a partner to your portfolio, we help you align your investments with your mission, demonstrating your commitment to issues important to your organisation. This involves assessing asset managers, strategies, and providers to ensure they reflect your objectives, along with establishing transparent monitoring and reporting frameworks.

  • Efficiencies 

    In a complex market, building robust portfolios and strategic asset allocations is important. We support you in pursuit of creating efficient portfolios that align with your risk appetite, optimise costs, and capture opportunities to help you achieve your financial goals.

  • Expertise

    Navigating an increasingly complex investment landscape can be challenging. We provide expert advice to review your asset allocation and approach, helping you identify priorities and develop a confident, long-term strategy aligned with your mission.

  • Flexibility

    Your portfolio should adapt to changing circumstances and market movements. We help you design flexible strategies that respond to adverse events and seize emerging opportunities, ensuring your investments remain aligned with your evolving needs.

  • Service standards

    When working with external advisers or consultants, you need confidence in their experience and capacity. We act as an extension of your team, helping you address key topics like alternative investments and sustainability, so you can focus on your core mission.
Investment trends

Top investment considerations for endowments and foundations 2025

Our paper examines four opportunities that endowments and foundations should consider for their portfolio construction in 2025.
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Common questions from non-profitnot-for-profit investors

We focus on three critical areas to help you improve the probability of achieving your investment goals:

  1. Portfolio mix: Review and adjust your strategic asset allocation and integrate alternative asset classes such as private market opportunities that help potentially provide strong returns.
  2. Improved governance: Define and develop a strong governance structure that is designed to help you make better-informed decisions and implement them efficiently.  
  3. Managing costs: Costs can significantly impact outcomes and are a critical factor. Our scale enables us to reduce both your explicit and implicit costs.

Implementation services, sometimes referred to as Implemented Investment Consulting or fiduciary management, provide specialised expertise to help you make and execute key investment decisions efficiently. They can assist with asset allocation, manager selection, and operational management, enabling you to focus on your core mission while benefiting from their experience and operational efficiencies.

Private markets such as infrastructure, private equity, private debt and real estate can all offer you important sources of potential returns and income that are less correlated with public equity and bond markets.

However, accessing these opportunities is not as easy. We leverage our global scale, extensive relationships, and experience to help you access private markets.

Extensive monitoring, reporting and engagement is critical to a successful review process of an asset manager. Having a solid understanding of the asset manager’s strategy, approach and specific exposures allows you to make better decisions.

We conduct extensive research of thousands of asset managers and strategies and provide this forward-looking reporting via our MercerInsight® helping you understand and optimise your manager relationships.

Although it’s extremely difficult to predict where the next economic shock will come from, it’s important that your portfolio is well diversified and this diversification is reviewed and tested on a regular basis.

Diversification is achieved through a mix of asset managers, asset classes and exposures and, drivers of return. Most not for profit investors are very well positioned to invest in less liquid asset classes and these can help reduce the volatility of your portfolio.

We can help you build a diversified portfolio and strategic asset allocation that aims to be well positioned for the future and also enables you to take advantage of short–medium term opportunities that may arise.

We have decades of experience helping clients across the globe integrate sustainability into their portfolios. This includes ESG, impact investing and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies. We can help you construct a portfolio and strategy to support your organisation’s wider goals.

We can work with you to develop the policies and principles that are aligned to your requirements and we will work with you to ensure these are executed, monitored and developed over time.

We can help you develop and execute a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy and process within your investment portfolios. We provide advice on KPIs and a framework to monitor these KPIs for all of the managers within your portfolio. We place a high value on diversity and inclusion when monitoring and selecting asset managers.

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Investment solutions to suit your needs

Leverage our breadth and depth

$17.5T

US $17.5 trillion in global assets under advisement1

$670Bn

US $670 billion in global assets under management2

11.5K+

11,500 investment strategies rated3

1 June 30, 2024. The assets under advisement data (AUA Data) reported here include aggregated assets under advisement for Mercer Investments LLC [and its affiliated companies globally (Mercer)]. The AUA Data has been derived from a variety of sources, including, but not limited to, third-party custodians or investment managers, regulatory filings, and client self-reported data. Mercer has not independently verified the data sourced from third parties in compiling the AUA Data. Where available, the AUA Data are provided as of the date indicated (the Reporting Date). To the extent information was not available as of the Reporting Date; information from a date closest in time to the Reporting Date, which may be of a date more or less recent in time than the Reporting Date, was included in the AUA Data. The AUA Data include assets of clients that have engaged Mercer to provide ongoing advice. Global AUA includes clients that have engaged Mercer to provide project-based services at any time within the 12-month period ending on the Reporting Date, as well as assets of clients that subscribe to Mercer’s Manager Research database delivered through the MercerInsight® platform as of the Reporting Date.

2 June 30, 2025. The assets under management data (the AUM Data) reported here include aggregated assets for which Mercer Investments LLC [and its global affiliates] provide discretionary investment management services as of the dates indicated. With respect to certain commitment-based private funds managed by Mercer Investments LLC or its global affiliates, the AUM data includes committed but uncalled capital, which may also be reflected in client assets otherwise managed by Mercer Investments LLC or its global affiliates. The AUM Data reported here may differ from regulatory assets under management reported in the Form ADV for Mercer Investments. For regulatory assets under management, please see the Form ADV for Mercer Investments which is available upon request by contacting Compliance Department, Mercer Investments 99 High Street, Boston, MA 02110.

3 June 30, 2025

We believe our significant scale and well-resourced team are best positioned to help you understand financial markets, construct an appropriate investment portfolio, and set out a long-term, sustainable strategy aligned with your organisation’s goals and mission.

Related insights

    Speak to a not-for-profit investment specialist

    Contact us to find out how we can help you with your not-for-profit investment needs.

    See our important notices

    *ESG investing refers to environmental, social, and governance considerations that may have a material impact on financial performance, and therefore are taken into account, alongside other economic and financial metrics, in assessing the risk and return potential of an investment. Thematic investing involves investing with a goal, at least in part, to achieve an impact on an environmental, social, or governance issue, alongside generating return and mitigating risk. As always, the decision whether to invest in ESG-themed options, like all options, must be made pursuant to a prudent process with the objective of advancing the financial interest of the plan and its participants.

    **Fee savings cannot be guaranteed.

    1. All case studies included in this presentation are for illustrative purposes only. Please note that the case study included is based on a real-life scenario, but all identifying information has been anonymised to protect the privacy and confidentiality of the parties involved. The purpose of this case study is to provide a general understanding of the services provided and the outcomes achieved. The results mentioned in this case study may not be typical and may vary depending on individual circumstances. This case study should not be considered as legal advice or a guarantee of similar results.
    2. Please see the Guide to Mercer's Investment Strategy Ratings
    3. Mercer cannot guarantee access to opportunities. Access is at the discretion of the investment manager.
    4. Diversification does not guarantee a profit or protect against a loss.