The Community Foundation of Greater Flint (CFGF) exists to connect the generosity of donors to needs in Genesee County. For Good. For Ever. For Everyone. Our Development team works to steward current and future donors, while our Community Impact team connects with grantee organizations and scholarship recipients to provide dollars to address needs. Those interactions represent essential stewardship work done at CFGF every day. Just as essential, though less visible, is the role of our Finance team.

Stewarding generosity fills us with joy and gratitude for the opportunity to serve with our colleagues and volunteers. We work closely with our trustees who serve as chairs of our Investment, Finance, and Audit committees to ensure that our stewardship, at the minimum, dots I’s and crosses Ts as appropriate. We strive for opportunities to infuse joy and gratitude into all we do so that we are truly stewarding generosity For Everyone.

The “for everyone” aspect of our work represents CFGF’s commitment to equity. We believe that equity must be part of all we do in Finance, and especially within our investment portfolio. Our investments represent a reflection of our organizational beliefs in addition to funding our “for good, forever” promise.

We work with our investment consultant to expand the number of diverse managers in our portfolio, and the proportion of assets held by those managers. We aim to have 25 percent of the dollars managed by our consultant to be under the care of diverse managers by 2025. We are currently at 22 percent, an exciting opportunity for us to aim at an even higher target and a rapid increase over the last four years.

Part of that increase is because of our intentionality in ensuring that we are investing in diverse managers, and the overall strong performance of the market. But another part is because of the outstanding performance of those managers specifically, an outcome that demonstrates the strategic underpinning of this investment approach: diverse managers see the market differently, have not always had access to the same dollars as “traditional” managers, and therefore, when provided with more dollars, have an opportunity to demonstrate their effectiveness in a way that creates value.

We are proud of the congruence being created between our investment portfolio and our mission and vision. Thank you for your confidence in our stewardship.