For endowments, foundations, and institutional pools
Institutional assets, managed to your mission.
Endowment, foundation, and institutional asset management built around your spending policy, your time horizon, and your mission — not a generic 60/40 benchmark or a fund-of-funds structure designed to maximize someone else’s fees.
Why institutions choose Premier
If your endowment or foundation is being managed against a benchmark instead of your mission, you’ve probably seen…
- Your spending policy and investment policy that have never actually been reconciled.
- Your allocation that drifted years ago and nobody’s formally re-set it.
- Your investment manager doing fine work but disconnected from your programmatic priorities.
- Your mission-aligned investment screens being talked about but never implemented.
We build institutional portfolios around the actual obligations they fund — not around the benchmark they happen to be compared to.
What's included
Everything one team handles for you.
Investment Policy Statement aligned to spending
Your IPS built around your actual spending rule, time horizon, and intergenerational equity goals — reconciled across investment committee and program committee.
Diversified institutional portfolio construction
Public equities, fixed income, real assets, and (where appropriate) alternatives — with transparent allocation logic and ongoing rebalancing.
Independent custody & fiduciary governance
Assets held at independent custodian. No proprietary funds. Documented decision-making process for committee.
Mission-aligned investing implementation
ESG screens, impact allocations, mission-related investments — designed and implemented for institutions that want investment alignment with programmatic intent.
Spending-policy modeling
Multi-year forecasting of spending capacity under various market scenarios. Helps boards make informed appropriation decisions.
Board & committee education
Quarterly board reports, annual deep-dives, board onboarding for new members. Documented governance that survives committee turnover.
Coordination with auditor and program staff
We work alongside your auditor, finance staff, and program directors. Our reporting feeds the audit cycle and the annual report cycle.
How we work
The Premier Method — applied to Institutional Asset Management.
The same four steps every Premier client experiences. Adapted to the specific work of Institutional Asset Management.
Listen
Full discovery: spending policy, current IPS, allocation, manager relationships, board minutes, audit history, programmatic priorities. We understand the institution before we propose anything.
Plan
A written IPS reconciled with your spending policy and mission, plus an allocation framework that supports both. Every decision documented for committee, auditor, and successor boards.
Coordinate
We brief your auditor, your program directors, and your finance staff on the new framework. Coordination with custodian and any sub-advisors on transition planning.
Communicate
Quarterly committee reports built for finance-committee review, annual board deep-dive, and ongoing communication with program staff. Real-time response when mission priorities or market conditions shift the picture.
What it looks like in practice
Three engagements. Three different starting points.
Foundation IPS reconciliation
A $40M foundation with mismatched spending and investment policies
A regional foundation with a $40M endowment, a 5% spending rule, and an investment policy that hadn’t been formally reviewed in 11 years. The actual allocation was significantly more conservative than the IPS specified, which had been quietly eroding spending capacity for years.
Reconciled the IPS to the actual spending rule and intergenerational-equity goal. Rebuilt the allocation framework. Coordinated the transition with the existing managers (we kept three of four after evaluation; replaced one).
Modeled long-term spending capacity recovered by approximately 18% over a 25-year horizon — without taking incrementally more risk than the IPS already permitted.
Community foundation impact tranche
Implementing a 10% mission-aligned allocation
A community foundation with a $25M endowment whose board had been talking for years about a mission-aligned tranche but had no practical implementation path. The investment committee was uncertain how to evaluate impact alongside financial performance.
Built a 10% mission-aligned tranche split across community-investment notes, ESG-screened public equity, and one place-based impact fund. Designed a dual-bottom-line reporting framework with both financial and impact metrics.
Mission alignment delivered without compromise on the financial return profile of the broader endowment. Board reporting now visibly demonstrates programmatic alignment.
University endowment governance reset
A small-college endowment with eroding documentation
A small private college with an $18M endowment, an investment committee composed of generous alums but no formal investment policy in writing. Donor restrictions on certain pools were tracked informally. Audit prep was painful every year.
Wrote the IPS. Implemented sub-pool accounting for restricted gifts. Built a board-onboarding deck for new committee members. Coordinated with auditor on annual reporting format.
A documented, defensible institutional investment process. Audit prep time reduced by roughly 60%. New committee members onboarded in 90 minutes instead of two meetings.
How we compare
Premier vs. the alternatives.
| Premier | Robo-advisor | Big-4 brokerage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compensation | Fee-only, AUM-based, no commissions | Low flat % (~0.25%), algorithmic | Mix: commissions + product revenue + advisory fee |
| Relationship | Same advisor & team for decades (20-yr avg tenure) | No human advisor (or paid-tier call center) | Assigned advisor; often reassigned every 18–24 months |
| Scope of work | Investment + tax + estate + business coordinated together | Investment allocation only | Investment-led; tax/estate often siloed or via product cross-sell |
| Conflicts | None — fiduciary, fee-only, no proprietary funds | Low — limited to their fund universe | Yes — proprietary products + commission-eligible securities |
Working together
How we charge, and who this is for.
How we charge
Fee-only. AUM-based. No commissions.
Transparent percentage tied to your assets under management. No commissions, no proprietary products, no soft-dollar arrangements. Discussed openly in your initial conversation and disclosed in writing in your engagement letter and our Form ADV.
Who this is for
Typically $1M+ in investable assets.
Most clients arrive with $1M or more under management. Some start smaller with a clear path — a business sale, an inheritance, a vesting event. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll tell you straight — and point you toward who is.
Common questions
Questions we get from prospective clients.
What size of institution do you work with?
Most engagements involve $10M+ in institutional assets. Some smaller institutions make sense when there’s a clear path or a particular governance need. We’re explicit about fit in the first conversation — we won’t take on an institution we can’t serve well.
Can you implement mission-aligned or ESG investing?
Yes, on the terms YOUR institution defines. We don’t push a particular ESG framework — we work with your board to define what mission alignment means for your institution, then implement it across the appropriate sleeves of the portfolio with the same fiduciary discipline as any other investment decision.
What happens if my advisor leaves the firm?
Why fee-only? What's wrong with commissions?
Commissions create a conflict of interest that even the most ethical advisor can't fully neutralize: if you're paid more for selling Product A than Product B, you'll naturally see more reasons to recommend Product A. We chose to remove the conflict structurally rather than try to manage it with good intentions. Fee-only means our compensation moves only when your assets do.
Do you work with my existing CPA and attorney?
Always. Your existing CPA and estate attorney know your history. We’re not in the business of replacing those relationships. What we DO is the coordination most firms skip — making sure your investment, tax, and estate decisions actually align with each other instead of contradicting each other in ways nobody notices until it costs you.
Becoming a client
A 30-minute institutional conversation, no pitch.
Bring your most recent IPS and your spending policy. We’ll spend 30 minutes telling you straight where they look aligned, where they look out of date, and what the highest-impact next move would be. No product pitch. No follow-up unless you ask.
Most chosen
Schedule a conversation
30 minutes. By phone or video. No prep needed.
Lower commitment
Request the wealth guide
A 24-page PDF on what "fiduciary" actually means — and how to evaluate one.
Direct line
Call us directly
707.443.2741 · 8 AM – 5 PM PT. A human answers, not a menu.
No pitch. No pressure. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.