Nonprofit Investment Advisory Services

Investing for Small, Medium, and Large Nonprofits

Nonprofit organizations encounter a variety of challenges today, and we believe investing shouldn’t be one of them. We advocate that nonprofit organizations need specialized investment solutions and strategies that can help support their longer-term missions. Since our inception, Matisse Capital has been helping our clients answer this important question: How should nonprofits invest? In fact, our team now advises more than $150 million in assets for nonprofits in Oregon and beyond.

We recognize that each nonprofit organization is unique, and an investment strategy that may work well for your nonprofit’s goals and mission may not be suitable for a different nonprofit organization. At Matisse Capital, we believe our nonprofit client investment portfolios should be well diversified, target specific asset allocations, and minimize fees to give our nonprofit clients the best possible opportunity to further their missions and achieve their goals. The key investing fundamentals we’ve developed over time provide a strong foundation to our investment approach with our nonprofit clients.

Matisse Capital is proud to be a business affiliate member of the Nonprofit Association of Oregon.

Nonprofit Advisory Services

We understand that nonprofits have different needs than the typical wealth management client. In addition to our standard wealth management services, we provide specialized investment services for nonprofits. When you work with Matisse Capital on your nonprofit investment account, you can expect the following services:

Learn About Your Nonprofit

We start by taking a deep dive into your nonprofit’s mission, goals, and objectives. Understanding who you are, what you do, and what you want to achieve is a critical component and significantly influences the construction of both the Investment Policy Statement and the investment portfolio itself. If your nonprofit has to work within and meet spending targets (real rate of returns), has certain mandates or restrictions on its investments, or is interested in sustainable or ESG investing, this initial learning phase is the time to discuss everything and anything related to your nonprofit organization.

Determine Appropriate Asset Classes

We firmly believe that asset allocation determines 80% to 90% of your portfolio’s returns. With nonprofits, the ability to invest using a non-taxable account can sometimes allow for allocations to non-traditional asset classes (if appropriate). As your nonprofit investment advisor, you can rely on us to analyze the risk and return expectations for a wide range of asset classes and find an optimal asset allocation mix that is unique to your nonprofit’s situation.

Recommend and Select Investments

Our job is to find the best investments (and investment managers) to help your nonprofit organization achieve its goals. We carefully research, identify, and recommend investments for your nonprofit investment account, and then further facilitate and execute trades on behalf of your organization during the portfolio construction process.

Build and Optimize Your Portfolio

Using general principles rooted in Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), we will build and optimize your nonprofit organization’s investment portfolio so that it is tailored to your unique risk tolerance and goals. We assess and analyze how the position weightings of each recommended investment will impact the tradeoff between risk and return, and then choose a final weighting mix that helps optimize the entire portfolio.

Custom, Goals-Based Account Reviews

We typically meet with our nonprofit clients on a quarterly basis to provide an update on the market and economy, review account performance, and monitor how the account is doing relative to its Investment Policy Statement. Our nonprofit clients (and their committee members) receive custom reporting packages that include a greater level of analysis than our typical wealth management client receives. We also provide fiduciary education services to nonprofit investment committee members as needed.