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Giving : Donor Advised Funds : Investment Performance

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Endowed Donor Advised Funds: The Community Foundation invests endowed donor advised funds in its endowment pool. This provides funds of all sizes with the benefits of diversification and the ability to maximize returns. Our endowment investment strategy is overseen by the Community Foundation's investment committee wiht the assistance of independent invesmtent consultant, New England Pension Consultants.

The annual return on the Endowment Pool was 15.9 percent in 2006. Annual returns for 2005 and 2004 were 9.1 percent and 13.5 percent, respectively.

Nonendowed Donor Advised Funds: Nonendowed Donor Advised Funds are invested in one of five investment strategies. Each investment strategy is designed to provide the maximum potential to match time horizons and cash needs of a particular donor advised fund with the charitable objectives of that fund. You may recommend that your donor advised fund be invested in one of these five strategies.

The Community Foundation also maintains investment pools with Northern Trust Bank. While the Northern Trust pools offer the same five investment strategies, the underlying mutual funds in each pool may vary.

You can review the underlying mutual funds that make up each pool and the current investment performance** of each pool by clicking on the link next to the institution's name below:

Advisers with funds in the Merrill Lynch Community Charitable Fund can review fund performance information and available options at the Web site for that program.

Available strategies

Current available strategies include:

Pool Target Investment Mix
Money Market 100% Money Market Funds
Wealth Preservation 75% fixed income funds/25% stock funds (10% international equity, 5% large cap growth, 5% large cap value, 5% small cap)
Balanced* 50% fixed income funds/50% stock funds (15% international equity, 12.5% large cap growth, 12.5% large cap value, 10%small cap)
Growth 25% fixed income funds/75% stock funds (55% international equity, 17.5% large cap growth, 17.5% large cap value, 15% small cap)
Equity Index 30% international equity, 25% large cap growth, 25% large cap value, 20%small cap

Each strategy is comprised of no-load, daily-valued American Funds mutual funds that have been reviewed and approved by the Community Foundation's Investment Committee and its independent investment adviser, New England Pension Consultants. In addition, each strategy is reviewed to ensure that it meets performance and quality benchmarks over time.

Recommendations should be based on the degree of market risk (i.e. change in value) and rate of return that is consistent with the amount and timing of the grants you plan to recommend. We suggest the following guidelines:

Guidelines Recommended Strategy
Payout is soon, preservation of value is sought and need for return is low Money Market
Payout is relatively soon, and risk and return sought are low to moderate Wealth Preservation
Payout, risk and return sought are all moderate Balanced*
Payout is long-term, and risk and return sought are moderate to high Growth
Payout is long-term, high return is sought and fluctuations in value can be tolerated Equity Index

*The Community Foundation uses the balanced strategy as the default investment strategy, since this strategy attempts to balance the various objectives.

While recommendations are welcome, please note that the determination of the investments of each donor advised fund, as well as the selection of the underlying investments of each strategy, are the responsibility of, and must be made by, the Community Foundation. A donor advised fund is not to be considered by the adviser as an investment under federal or state securities laws.

**Please note that the weighted performance and fees reported for each strategy are illustrative only. The weighting of each mutual fund within a strategy will vary due to investment performance in each fund between times when the mutual funds are rebalanced within the strategy. Further, historical performance information does not guarantee future performance.