Who Does the Work? Investment Governance Takeaways from Philanthropy Southeast 2026

Anna Dunn Tabke, CFA, CAIA, founder and president of Leita Advisory, led "Beyond Performance: Governance, Alignment, and Communication in a More Complex Investment Portfolio" for the Philanthropy Southeast 2026 Virtual Investing Series on October 8. She was joined by Anne Davis, President of The Christy-Houston Foundation, Inc. and a trustee of the Murfreesboro Community Investment Trust.

Anne sits on both sides of the table. At Christy-Houston she leads a small staff that works with the board and an outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO). At the Community Investment Trust she is in her second term as a trustee, on a board that hired its first OCIO.

The session took on two questions:

• What is your job under your investment governance model?

• What does that model require to work?

Why governance needs more attention now

A foundation that plans to exist in perpetuity has to earn its spending plus inflation, roughly CPI + 5% a year. Portfolios built to reach that target have grown more complicated. In fiscal 1999, the average U.S. college and university endowment held about 8% in alternatives (private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, real estate and commodities). By fiscal 2025, it held about 30%.

Each of those allocations brings its own managers, paperwork, capital calls, K-1s and valuation work. The people overseeing it all (a board, an investment committee, an executive director, a CFO, a consultant, an OCIO) are arranged differently at almost every foundation. The same job title can mean very different work from one organization to the next.

Five takeaways

1. Know which decisions you own

Foundations usually get investment help in one of three ways, and many blend them:

• Internal investment team: investment staff make the decisions. This is rare outside very large foundations.

• Investment consultant: the consultant advises, the committee recommends and the board approves.

• OCIO: the OCIO makes day-to-day decisions within the limits of the Investment Policy Statement (IPS).

Responsibilities shift a lot between the consultant and OCIO models. With a consultant, the board or committee decides return and spending policy, strategic asset allocation, manager selection and rebalancing, and staff carry out much of the operational work. With an OCIO, the committee still sets return and spending policy and strategic asset allocation. Manager selection, rebalancing, cash management, reporting and paperwork move to the OCIO, and the committee and staff oversee that work.

An OCIO shares fiduciary duty with the investment committee. The committee keeps its part of that duty. Every agreement is different, so committees should read theirs.

Anne's two seats made the difference concrete. As President of Christy-Houston, she prepares the conversation, and the Investment Committee recommends actions to the full board for final approval. As a trustee, she is one of the people deciding. One question from the session is worth bringing to any committee: when your provider brings something to a meeting, are you being asked to decide, to give input, or to understand an action already taken?

2. Capacity: someone has to do the work

An OCIO takes on two kinds of work. On the investment side, it hires and fires managers, sets tactical asset allocation and rebalances. On the operations side, it handles manager paperwork, raises cash and gathers documents. Organizations can now mix and match these pieces more than they could a few years ago. That gives them more choice and more room for confusion about who owns a task. A committee should be able to say who handles K-1s, trades, reports, manager decisions and IPS changes.

Christy-Houston has a small staff and a sophisticated portfolio. It invests through two pooled funds run by its OCIO, plus a few legacy holdings. The OCIO picks and monitors managers, handles capital calls and distributions, and runs fund administration and the investment audit. Christy-Houston keeps spending and cash needs, board oversight, tax filings, its own audit and the legacy holdings. Investing through a pool let the foundation own private equity from the start, which would have been hard for a small staff to manage directly. Its OCIO has also helped with simpler K-1s, cybersecurity and an IPS review every two years.

As Anna put it: "The work didn't disappear. It moved."

3. Clarity: everyone knows why the portfolio is built this way

The IPS is the board's written plan for the portfolio. It sets objectives, spending, asset allocation and benchmarks, and it says who decides what. Best practice is to review it every two years.

A good IPS answers four questions every trustee should be able to answer:

1. Why this portfolio?

2. How does it fund our spending?

3. What should we expect?

4. When would we revisit it?

4. Communication: meetings that explain the numbers

Quarterly meetings drift toward reading performance reports. Three habits keep them useful:

• Revisit the reasoning behind the strategy every year.

• Teach one topic a meeting, so a bad number arrives with context.

• Write down why you decided, so new members inherit the reasoning along with the portfolio.

5. Composition: the right people at the table

Good investment trustees are willing and able to decide, do the homework before meetings, and ask good questions. Good questions come from every background, including members who don't work in investing.

Northern Trust's guidance for nonprofit directors covers several habits of strong boards, including: know the documents, bring in experts, "govern, don't manage," and build and renew the board.

Questions for your next committee meeting

• Capacity: Who does the work, and where are the gaps?

• Clarity: Could every trustee explain why our portfolio is built this way?

• Communication: Do our meetings explain, or just report?

• Composition: Do we have the right people at the table?

Thank you to Philanthropy Southeast for hosting, and to Anne Davis for sharing both of her perspectives.