Endowment Program
To be good stewards of the resources entrusted to your church, making provision for a long-term investment vehicle is highly encouraged. While your church may utilize any investment partner they, wish, the United Methodist Foundation of West Ohio is pleased to assist your church in establishing an endowment fund, or assuming the management of an existing endowment fund.
What is an Endowment Fund?
- An investment vehicle for organizations.
- Typically designated for a specific purpose.
- The principal is invested, and the earnings create a source of income to support the church or a specific program at the church.
- This vehicle earns a higher yield than a savings account or CD.
Why Should Your Church Start One?
Why establish an Endowment Fund?
Why Choose UMFWO instead of another financial firm?
The short answer to this question is: alignment. Investing with the UMFWO is the ONLY way to be completely sure that your funds are being invested in alignment with the social principles of the United Methodist Church while still earning competitive rates of return. Wespath Institutional Investments, our asset manager, is the gold standard for this Book of Discipline aligned investment strategy, which includes ethical and financial risk exclusions, investments in positive social purpose lending programs and low-carbon energy solutions; and engaging with corporations to improve business practices that negatively affect employees and the environment.
How to Start an Endowment Fund with UMFWO
To establish an Organizational Endowment Fund with the Foundation, a participating organization must complete and sign an Endowment Investment Management Agreement (the “Endowment Agreement”) within the packet found on this page. Under the terms of the Endowment Agreement, the participating organization delivers cash or acceptable property to the Foundation to be held in a named fund. The fund is invested and maintained as a sub account fund of the Foundation’s Endowment Program, and the Foundation is authorized to sell, transfer, exchange, invest or reinvest all or any part of the sub account fund pursuant to investment guidelines established by the Foundation’s Investment Committee.
Contact us for more information or to request a presentation to your church finance committee or leadership board.
The Endowment Program of the West Ohio Conference was initiated in 2007 by action of the Council on Development and the Annual Conference. The purpose of the Endowment Program is to offer to Conference organizations and agencies, churches, and members a vehicle for organizing, funding, and managing endowment funds. These organizations can transfer an existing endowment fund to the Foundation to be held and invested in the Organizational Endowment Funds. Donors may make designated gifts to these endowments at any time or may include them in their estate plans.
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Endowment FAQs
The Foundation has been serving West Ohio congregations since 1978. We provide investment management that allows investors to choose an allocation mix of equities for growth, fixed income, or a balanced fund and that are aligned with the social principles of the UMC found in the Book of Discipline. We partner with highly respected investment advisors and highly vetted fund managers to offer investors exceptional investment opportunities. Our Foundation team meets on a regular basis with our investment advisors to review reports and adjust as needed.
The Foundation currently partners with Wespath Institutional Investments. All investment decisions are based on our Investment Policy Statement which aligns with the Social Principles of the UMC. Performance and economic context for assets under management are reviewed quarterly by our Investment Committee. The Committee meets with representatives of our investment firms and presses them on investment outlook, risk in our invested portfolios, and their returns relative to stated benchmarks. The discipline of the quarterly IC meetings ensures the managers are overseen closely and that any deviation from expected returns is understood.
The majority of our investment accounts are endowment funds that share the stated goal of long-term growth as well as current income. Accordingly, we recommend a significant portion of fund assets to be invested in equities and a lesser portion in fixed income assets. Historically, the balanced strategy has been allocated 55%-60% to equities and 40%-45% to fixed income. Please contact us for more information.
You may change the asset allocation of your account at any time with a written request along with two signatures from the Management Agreement Signature page.
Yes, on-line access is available through our sub-accounting platform, iPhi.
Statements are available on the iPhi portal quarterly. Account holders may receive printed reports on request.
Please contact UMFWO Executive Director Susan Black at 380-223-9257. Please request our Church Endowment Packet for detailed information about our Endowment Program. More information can be found at our website, as well, www.umfwestohio.org.