About the Fund

Endowment Fund Pooled Trust

Participation in the ELCA Endowment Fund Pooled Trust
The ELCA Endowment Fund Pooled Trust - Fund A, administered by the ELCA Foundation with the ELCA Board of Pensions acting as investment advisor, invests assets entrusted to it by congregations, synods and other organizations of the church. The ELCA Foundation invites ELCA congregations and institutions to invest in Fund A.

Experienced Management
When pooled in the ELCA Endowment Fund Pooled Trust - Fund A, your institution's endowment assets are managed and invested by professionals. The Board of Pensions currently manages over $7 billion. The Trust offers one fund, the ELCA Endowment Fund "A" (Fund), for investment.  

Investment managers of the Pooled Trust are: JP Morgan Asset Management; AXA Rosenberg Institutional Equity Management; Alliance Bernstein Institutional Management; SEI Investments; Barclays Global Investors NA; Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited; BlackRock Financial Management; Cohen & Steers Capital Management; Shenkman Capital Management, Inc.; T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.; and Board of Pensions of the ELCA.

Economies of Scale in Investing
Your organization's assets are pooled with the accounts from many other ELCA synods, congregations, agencies and institutions as well as the permanent endowment funds of the ELCA churchwide ministry. When you pool your organization's or congregation's assets in this unitized fund with the accounts of others, the larger aggregate fund allows a diversity of investment that may not otherwise be available. Investments are made in accordance with the ELCA's guidelines for socially responsible
investing.

Investment Objective: Growth and Income for the Long Term
The Fund is structured to provide participants with a relatively stable, quarterly stream of distributable investment income that grows over time. The Fund also seeks to provide participants with long-term capital appreciation, keeping pace with the expected long-term rate of inflation. Fund A's target allocation is 50% in U.S. equity, 15% non-U.S. equity, 20% fixed income, 10% high yield fixed income and 5% real estate investment trusts.

Social Purpose Investing
Fund A pursues its investment objective using criteria of social responsibility that are consistent with the values and programs of the ELCA. These social responsibility criteria are used to limit the universe of securities in which the fund may invest. The social responsibility criteria limit purchase of companies that exceed thresholds in the following businesses: 

• harmful products or services including tobacco, distilled alcohol, pornography or gambling 
• those that research and develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, or manage U.S. government-owned facilities for such weapons 
• those with significant toxic waste releases, hazardous waste sites, and environmental penalties or liabilities; and major producers of toxic chemicals

In addition, we seek investments that benefit community economic development or the environment.

The statements above do not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, to any person in Mississippi or Vermont.