Earnest Sweat 00:00
Bob, welcome to swimming with alligators.

Alexa Binns 00:04
The VC podcast, from the LP perspective,

Earnest Sweat 00:07
with your hosts,

Alexa Binns 00:08
Alexa bins and earnest. Are you ready? Let’s dive in. Welcome to our guest, Bob Bancroft. He is a coffee connoisseur as well as the VP of Finance and mission investments at Nathan Cummings foundation. He’s going to share with us today how they’ve managed to transform their endowment to nearly 100% mission aligned, their due diligence 2.0 blueprint for manager selection, as well as some of the investment focuses for 2025 thanks for being here.

Bob Bancroft 00:40
Thanks so much for having me.

Alexa Binns 00:44
I think everybody secretly has a desire to open a coffee shop, Bob, and you actually have been a wholesaler and cafe owner, and so maybe to put those dreams to bed, I’m very curious, what are the best parts of running a coffee shop? Should I? Should any of us be considering leaving finance to do what you would have started out doing? Well,

Bob Bancroft 01:13
You know, I would never get in the way of someone chasing their dreams. It’s been a little romanticized, but I was more on the wholesale side. So I was working with restaurants and bakeries in Boston, and I would say the best part was the relationships, because in food service, it’s all sort of like extended friends and family in a way. And so I made a lot of good friends and a lot of good relationships. From that time

Alexa Binns 01:41
you get to trade good coffee for maybe good wine, or I never had

Bob Bancroft 01:46
to make a reservation, I could just show up. So that was kind of nice.

Earnest Sweat 02:23
That’s funny. All right, I’m sure it was about the beans, but we will talk more about that off camera. So how do you come, Bob, from, you know that world to becoming an allocator? Can you walk us through how you got to this world?

Bob Bancroft 02:40
Yeah, I guess, like the intermediate step was my time at my previous Foundation, the Jack can cook Foundation, and to be honest with you, I stumbled into the nonprofit world by accident. It was, it was not by design. It wasn’t a plan. I literally applied for a part time bookkeeper role at a foundation in Northern Virginia, and didn’t really know a lot about what foundations do, but very quickly became enamored with this idea that an entire organization could be devoted to a mission and to a social purpose, and that a whole team of people is just putting their whole selves into trying to make the world a little bit better in a certain way, day by day. So just once, I got a taste of that. I was hooked. Now I came in more from the accounting lane, and so eventually, my boss, at the time, their CFO, determined that we were going to change our investment manager and asked me to run a point on the search process. And I just had this idea that, well, I’m really curious about this world, so I’m going to have all of these candidates kind of teach me. So I have no formal training. I don’t come from this, you know, I don’t have, like, a finance background, but I just learned by doing, and then eventually, kind of helped manage that relationship, and that’s how I got exposure to the world of endowments. Sounds kind of crazy when I say it out loud.

Earnest Sweat 04:15
It’s awesome, though. And so what were the kinds of the experiences from the finance and foundations that really got you hooked, any formative stories?

Bob Bancroft 04:27
Yeah, I think partly, as I was saying before, just that idea of having a social purpose. So this, this first foundation that I worked for, their mission was to empower high achieving, low income kids to get an education, and just seeing the way that someone’s life trajectory can be changed with not a lot, just someone believing in them, basically making a small investment in them, just really changed the way that I. Thought about the world.

Alexa Binns 05:04
Yeah, that sense that you are the butterfly in the butterfly effect. In fact, the Jack Kent Cook Foundation, its large, $700 million endowment. Curious, if they had a venture strategy, or if not, you know where venture sat in your early education? Yeah,

Bob Bancroft 05:27
Their mandate was a much more traditional investing mandate. So there was no mission alignment or impact per se, and venture played a pretty small role. So I would say probably less than 5% of the endowment, or thereabouts, and just to, you know, sort of to juice up the returns long term capital appreciation. But that board was pretty explicit that they didn’t want to commingle the investment strategy with the mission. And that’s the way it is that a lot of philanthropic organizations, there’s this firewall that exists between the investment activity and the quote, unquote programmatic activity,

Alexa Binns 06:10
which leads us very much to what you’ve been doing for Nathan Cummings foundation. You, you’re the guy helping transform them for this incredible goal of having a 100% mission aligned endowment. Can you share what that process has been like?

Bob Bancroft 06:30
Sure, I think the most important thing to share at the outset is just that it’s a journey. And so I remember I joined the foundation right around the time that they made this announcement for this new strategic direction, and a lot of folks in the field just wanted to know, what percent are you at today and when will you be done? And we’re all about holding ourselves accountable, so measurement is an important part of the strategy. But what I try to convey is that it’s not a one and done sort of exercise. What we’re actually saying is that we recognize that this endowment is a really powerful tool, and that we want to take it off of the sidelines and integrate it with the mission of the organization, and so that is not a concrete, discrete sort of task, right? That is just a change in the way we think and a change in the way we do business.

Earnest Sweat 07:31
What initiatives or KPIs did you have to put in place to shift that thinking? Because that’s a big shift from having a wall of programs here and investments here to now. Alright, they’re going to be fully integrated. How does that work? Do you need to bring in new types of people who can think about things in a different way? Do you need to have people who have both the you know, foundation experience, programmatic experience, as well as the investing experience, because we have a lot of allocators of all sizes that are on the who listen to the show. Curious, if you could walk them through on what needs to be in the ingredients to actually have that shift?

Bob Bancroft 08:15
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I, you know my short answer would be all of the above, because it is. It is finding the right partner. It is making sure that you have the right voices at the table. At a more basic level, it’s a culture shift right and investment professionals and grant makers are not used to sitting at the same table, and they don’t speak the same language right out of the gate. And so I think, like some of our early attempts were just getting everyone in the room together, and that was a good gesture, but it maybe wasn’t as productive as as what we would have liked, because the, you know, they were, I mean, they were, it was a good faith effort, right? Everyone was trying to understand everyone else. But so there’s a lot of culture building. I think that’s the foundation of that work. One of the, I think strengths of our board’s vision is that they did not require us to have all the answers up front. And so they were actually very explicit in saying, We’ve determined that this is where we want to go with the endowment, and we’re going to trust each other to carve a path to get there. And so we really do view it as a journey, and it’s something that we try to get better at every year. But if we had tried at the outset of that journey, almost eight years ago, to define everything all up front, we probably would have never gotten started. And so sometimes you just have to get going in order to figure out where the. What the learning opportunities are.

Earnest Sweat 10:03
There’s a certain level of boldness that comes with that, and it’s just becoming a running theme of when you’re trying to introduce new things in these different types of allocator organizations, you have to have intentionality, a balance between intentionality and flexibility and absolutely a long term view. So when, when you guys are deciding on this shift and bringing people in the room and deciding, hey, we’re going this way, what’s the right time frame, do you feel like you’ll actually have some answers and some results? Well, I

Bob Bancroft 10:42
I think let me answer that two ways, from a sort of just investment performance standpoint, we generally think in five year increments. People used to say market cycle. It’s not clear exactly what that means in terms of the number of years so, but I think something like a five year increment is reasonable, right, okay? But, but I also want to take a sort of like answer that from a maybe a different angle, which is you, you mentioned, sort of like establishing that the purpose, and I think that for us was was really important, so maybe we didn’t have KPIs at day one, but being clear about the mission and the values of the organization and how that is intended to infuse the investing process over time, having An agreement about that and also, I think a key ingredient in our case was we went on a learning journey together, so it didn’t just sort of fall out of the sky that the board said, Hey, let’s commit the endowment to this, you know, radical new strategy. They were very careful about it. And the the, you know, sort of proposal that was made to all of the trustees and the Investment Committee was, is, is impact investing something you are curious about, and if you are curious about it, are you interested in going on a learning journey together, and if so, are you willing to make A decision at the end of that learning journey, that was it. So it wasn’t like we didn’t say at the outset, this is about deciding whether we’re doing 100% or 0% or 20% and many of the trustees have told me like they would have been more than happy if we had gotten a carve out as a result of that process. So there was no forgone conclusion, and we had our share of skeptics. So we had some folks, especially on the investment committee, that were like, Sure, I’ll learn about it, but that’s not real investing, I mean. And so there’s this, I think, pervasive myth out there that if you, if you make any modification of the, let’s say traditional investment process, that somehow the endowment is just going to implode. And it, you know, it’s a bit of a scare tactic, I think. But our experience, at any rate, has, has not been that the endowment is healthy, so there’s been, there’s been no major shake up to our returns because of this. Can

Alexa Binns 13:26
Can you recollect what was convincing, ultimately, to some of those doubters?

Bob Bancroft 13:33
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think it was seeing data about how actual impact investing strategies performed, how some ESG strategies performed, speaking with peers who were at the time, ahead of us and had already started doing it, and hearing that it was okay, like things were working. As I said, the sky didn’t fall down. One of the beautiful things about our market system is it prices things very efficiently, right? And so you can apply filters, and you can shape your strategy, and it doesn’t mean that you’re going to sacrifice your returns. Love

Earnest Sweat 14:21
hearing it, because that’s so important. For people to know. You can do both. They don’t sacrifice returns

Bob Bancroft 14:30
earnest just to that point we are now, as I say, about eight years in, we’ve substantially reconfigured the endowment. So I mean, out of like a $500 million endowment, let’s say 300 plus has been turned over into new funds. At this point, we never made a change to our benchmark, and we’re continuing to meet our policy benchmark for financial performance. So we’re not alone. Some of our peers have also. Have put out great studies showing that they’ve been able to achieve their performance goals. That’s

Earnest Sweat 15:04
amazing, and we need more of those studies just to prove they do. Yeah, we do. Bob, one thing I wanted to make sure that the audience could hear is, you know, what does impact investing look like? To your foundation? To the Nathan cums Foundation, because that’s a term that has been used that you can go to soap cap and you think, you can think that, oh, it means this. And then you hear 12 different definitions from seven different foundations. And so I wanted to hear kind of like, you know, how do you all define impact investing?

Bob Bancroft 15:42
Yeah, I call it the alphabet soup, because there’s all these different acronyms and terms. And to your point, when someone says that they’re doing impact investing, my response is always great, tell me what you mean, because I don’t, I don’t know, right? And that’s part of it’s a reflection of the fact that this movement and this idea is still nascent and is still evolving. So it’s not, I don’t want that to scare people away, but it is something you have to know going in, right? You have to know that you’re entering into a new space, and things are not fully defined yet, and things are not fully standardized. The blanket term that we use is mission aligned investing, and for us, that is meant to encompass a range of tools. And so we don’t, you know, try to be prescriptive when speaking with peers about which tool they should start with, but they’re all valid. So for example, in the tool kit, you have things like negative screening, which is you’re trying to identify bad stuff, whether it’s bad practices, bad industries, bad actors, and you’re trying to avoid it, right? You also have the so-called positive screening, where you’re looking for good behaviors, good actors, companies that have good you know, good practices, and you’re proactively seeking those out, right? So that’s sort of the next level up, and then impact investing for us generally. What we mean when we say that is that the business thesis and the impact thesis of the enterprise are intertwined so that if the business thesis succeeds, there will inherently be a positive social outcome or a positive environmental outcome. So impact investing for us is like investing in solutions, whereas those other categories are more about identifying practices that you either want to avoid or lean into. And then on top of that, in our tool kit, we also have shareholder engagement. So where we’re invested, I know we’re today focused on venture, but the endowment obviously has all the asset classes in it, including public equity. And so with our public equities, we take a very active posture in terms of filing proposals in some cases, and just being really mindful about how our proxies are voted.

Alexa Binns 18:10
Did that transition as you were turning over the portfolio also mean an adjustment in terms of allocation?

Bob Bancroft 18:21
That’s a good question. Not too much the one, well, the two areas where it did impact our asset class allocation, one was hedge funds, because we were not dogmatically opposed to them. We’re just the universe of hedge funds that has an impact. Lens that you know works for us is very small, and so the role of hedge funds in our strategy decreased dramatically, so we have, like, less than a 1% allocation to them. Right now, we’re open if we find the right opportunity. Again, it’s not dogmatic, and then the other side was actually VC, because we do see a lot of really compelling impact opportunities in those earlier stage investments. And so our VC allocation is around 15% right now, which for foundation endowment is relatively high.

Earnest Sweat 19:24
Now we’re going to take a quick break to speak with our sponsor

Alexa Binns 19:27
on the show today. We have a friend and industry expert, Nick Talwar, factional CTO for both VCs and their port. Cos, his agency, bodega, eight trains, custom, AI models for financial institutions like yours. Welcome Nick Would you give us some tangible examples, whether it’s implementing AI for sourcing or tracking, or you were talking about, you know, looking through the deck?

Nick Talwar 21:38
Yeah. So that’s a good question. They’re about to hear something like a small handful this matter, you talked about sourcing. AI can analyze, like, massive data sources and like emerging companies trends. It’s really, really good at that, like, particularly like summarizing sentiment and shifts automatically. And you can’t use some real time sources for AI, augmenting prior train models like, you know, chat, GPT is trained on X months in the past, right when you use like a one preview or for like, and so you need to augment that. And using and building a simple technology stack that can do that for you is really, really powerful for forcing deals that could scan, use patents, you know, funding data, and suggest startups, or it’s like an augmented sort of radar, yeah. The second is like, you know, due diligence. Like, everyone wants to do better, due diligence. And it’s really, really hard. And we talked about the top of our, of our, of our chat here, that it’s really hard to kind of suss out the pretenders from the actual and experts. So you can deliver support and models through financials, technical documents, even, you know, give you, give you a snapshot of risks, strengths and patterns of time. And so I especially if you have a very core thesis in an industry that’s really, really important. You don’t want to dilute that thesis when you, you know, talk to the next charismatic founder type, right? So you want to make sure you keep yourself and them honest. Portfolio tracking and benchmarking. Build a simple AI driven dash for and then that’ll help inform your LPS better build that relationship. Like investor and LP reporting is also really important. So those are kind of like, you know, three or four use cases that AI can help you with. Almost every single one of them requires some custom customization. I mean, you can’t just, like, open up a GPT chat and ask it a question. And so we use, like, agentic frameworks and things like that to put those together for you. And, yeah, that’s what, that’s what we think could work. Well, yeah,

Alexa Binns 23:49
no, I think that customization is a big part of what we talk about on this show, in terms of differentiation. Because in many ways, GPS, you know, we take money from one hand and we pass it into the other. And so having, having custom tech is is sort of a no brainer now, and how to differentiate yourself in the market,

Nick Talwar 24:09
yeah, and on that point of differentiation in the market, like your brand is super important. AI can, like supercharge, it’s like a thought partner, and you can help with content distribution, like all basically the best content distribution strategies today are multi channel, and that’s really, really hard to do on your own right. Like you might write a great blog post or prospectus and want to chop it up into a Twitter thread, then also put it on LinkedIn, and it’s a slightly different format. And then if you’re really spicy, you might want to create some TikTok dances with those things, or or, or put up a YouTube channel, and maybe it’s like a faceless YouTube channel or a conversation podcast and chop up your likes. Those are all multi-channel strategies, and they actually reinforce each other. So because all the algorithms on these big companies are actually listening to each other. So if. Something pops off on TikTok like it’s more likely to be pushed on reels or on YouTube because they’re constantly changing. So I always recommend a multi channel strategy if you can, if you can execute on it. And AI is your partner to help you chop things up and move things forward and curate things as you go.

Alexa Binns 25:21
Thank you so much, Nick. If you are looking for help implementing AI at your fund or across your portfolio, you can please go to Bottega eight.com. Backslash swimming. That’s B, O, T, T, E, G, A, eight, as in the number.com backslash swimming. We appreciate you giving this the credit, so please use the URL, and now back to our LP interview.

Earnest Sweat 25:46
So you have this is a great segue you have, where you’re going, the purpose, how allocation will shake out. This will be very helpful, because even just giving our audience of allocators and fund managers, just in kind of like behind the curtain on, how do you get more foundations in your as as investors and even knowing, all right, all right, we have to go through the outsource CIO that really helps our audience. So please go through Share, share the insights from that experience.

28:01
Yeah. Well, why

Bob Bancroft 28:02
don’t I start with what I consider one of the turning points for us, and it relates to a particular VC fund, impact America, fund that our board and staff was very interested in seeing, NCF invest in and so we brought the idea to our OCIO, and they, they took a careful look at it, and they came back to us to explain why they were not going To be able to move forward with the investment. And as we listened to the rationale, a realization occurred for us, because what we were hearing was and all of their points were sort of reasonable on the surface. Okay, so we were hearing, well, this is sort of like just launching into fund two. We usually like to wait for fund three or fund four. We like to see a little more track record. Or we usually prefer to see a GP that has more skin in the game, which means the GP has enough wealth that they can put skin in the game, right? Or that? Well, we don’t know this GP too well yet. They’re not in our networks. So we want to, we want to get to know them better before we move forward with an investment. This all sounds kind of reasonable, but when those criteria are stacked together. What they form is a great big wall that stops anyone new from getting in. Yeah, and that is what we realized. And so it wasn’t a moment of pointing the finger at the investment team, but it was at. Actually turning the mirror to ourselves and saying it’s not enough for us to just say we want to invest in more diverse teams, or we want to support emerging managers. Of course, that outcome is important to us, but as you both know, there’s a whole series of activities that happens before an investment recommendation is ultimately made. And it’s sometimes just as important to look at the investments that were not recommended and understand and so this really sort of kicked us off to an introspective period where we were asking ourselves, what are we going to have to do differently, not just in terms of assigning KPIs and things like that, but actually looking at the investment process itself, and that was actually what led us to the due diligence 2.0 pledge. Right as we were asking ourselves these questions, this really talented group of mostly black investment professionals just brought this thing over and said, Hey, one of them is sort of a close colleague. Again. She called me and said, Would you be willing to look at a draft of this thing? This is what we’re trying to do. And I said this is exactly what not only MCF needs, but it’s exactly what the field needs, and it’s literally a blueprint to look at the due diligence process and make it stronger by removing some of these barriers. So we adopted it right away, and that was a really big part of our transformation.

Alexa Binns 31:44
Did you share any nuggets of what is in the blueprint?

Bob Bancroft 31:48
Yes, I’m happy to. I also want to encourage anyone listening to like, go to the website and check it out. So, you know, like a big one and this sort of will connect to what I was describing with impact America Fund is to consider alternatives to track record right or to another one is to reassess assets under management as a metric, because that can be very biasing in a search process and be willing to go first is a big one right now this, I love the name due diligence 2.0 because it implies it is an enhancement, which I believe it is. And as an enhancement, it requires the allocators to do more work, right? Yeah, because it’s much easier to just say, I know these guys. They’ve been at Goldman for 15 years, and all of the others, all of my competitors, are invested in that fund. So it’s completely safe for me to make that recommendation. There’s like no professional risk to that person to make that recommendation, and they don’t have to do as much work. I don’t mean to demean any investment professionals that may be listening, but relatively speaking, having to look at a new team and having to alternative to track record means I’ve got to really dig into that person’s previous experiences to understand where that team has been and what they’ve done, and how that might position them to succeed in this new venture. And now I’m going to fund one or fund two, that I’m out on a limb now. So if that investment doesn’t do well, people are going to be bringing the heat to me, right? So there’s more. Basically, what I’m saying is asset allocators are not incentivized naturally to do that, even though the data says that those first time funds generally outperform, right? Like the data says that fund one and fund two is where you get a lot of the out performance. And so it was partly this, this due diligence, 2.0 blueprint, helping us kind of crystallize that, and that was part of what motivated us to say, let’s make sure that we have the right partner making these decisions on our behalf.

Earnest Sweat 34:20
Thank you so much for sharing that. I jotted it down to something I’m going to share with some other allocators I know, and even some organizations that are focused on increasing the diversity of fund managers that are out there in the venture capital world. Please do No.

Alexa Binns 34:37
It’s a relief you don’t have to do this work yourself. Somebody’s already done it, he’s super

Bob Bancroft 34:42
smart. It was a blessing.

Earnest Sweat 34:45
Bob, you mentioned that you know you guys had a change in transition in your outsource CIO. Could you share that story and kind of the learnings from it?

Bob Bancroft 34:59
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, happy to do once we made the decision to start a search process, we realized that it was critical all of this learning we had done through the due diligence process of our investment team, including that due diligence 2.0 pledge that I mentioned that we now had to hold ourselves accountable to a similar standard in how we conducted our search, even though we weren’t searching for a manager, but in this case, for an investment advisor, and we were very interested in thinking about What we could do to help identify talent and build capacity in the field. And our research showed us that to the extent that you had a few biotech owned investment teams, women owned investment teams out there, that they tended to be smaller, and in some cases that they tended to focus maybe more on one asset class, whereas we need all of the asset classes covered. And so we made a decision right out of the gate in how we designed our search process, which was to say, we will welcome joint proposals. And that was our way of saying, if you’re not of a certain size or if you’re missing a capability, but you can work with a partner to collectively deliver those capabilities to us. We want to hear from you. And if we hadn’t made that decision at the outset, we probably would have never gotten to know Vivian and West Fuller, who, at the time, were two separate firms that were just in the process of coming together. So they were one of those joint proposals that we received. Another one of the recommendations we talked about from that pledge was to consider alternatives to AUM as a metric, and this was also really important in our search, because again, at the time, those two firms combined were sort of around two, 2 billion under management, and for a lot of allocators with a portfolio our size, that would be disqualifying, They just you wouldn’t make it any further in the search process, and we just didn’t want to accept that as an outcome. So we absolutely held them to the same standard as everyone else in our process. It wasn’t as if they got a handicap, but what they did get was some extended runway. They got it on the ramp so that they could be in dialogue with us, and so that we could get to know them. And over the course of our process, which was rigorous and took the better part of a year, they just rose to the top. And it was really refreshing for us to find an investment team with their combination of skill and acumen, but also just authentic values alignment. So we made that change about two years ago, and we just couldn’t be happier with the results of the new partnership. So far.

Earnest Sweat 38:16
I love that story because it shows that you took the due diligence 2.0 blueprint and it’s not only applied to like the fund managers that you bring in, but also how you make the decision on who’s going to be your partner in finding those so that’s an awesome thank you for sharing, with respects to venture in your portfolio, you’ve shared kind of the allocation and where that is. But could you talk about a few of them, you know, mention of the investments and how they, you know, fit within your kind of goal of this mission driven investments?

Bob Bancroft 38:54
Yeah, so the good news is that we were eventually able to invest in impact America Fund we’re in fund three, so we missed the opportunity to get into fund two, but we are in fund three now, and it’s an example of a strategy that is just totally aligned with how we’re thinking about impact. They have this notion. They call it inherent impact, and it’s just as I was saying before. The idea is that the business model and the impact thesis are commingled. They are also thinking, when they say inherent impact, they’re also looking for companies that are creating opportunity and empowerment in marginalized communities. So they’re applying that lens, and one of the things that they say about their research process is that lived experience is a competitive advantage. So that’s also an example of a track record alternative, right? So it’s just for. Philosophically. This was why we felt so strongly about it. It’s just right in our wheelhouse. So that’s an example of a fund that we’re really excited about. We hope to have a lot more to talk about in the future. Since the change in investment team was fairly recent, we’ve been a little strained in the first few years about making new venture commitments, but we’re looking forward to making more in the future.

Alexa Binns 40:27
And is there anything that you wish more GPs knew? You know between your relationship with the OCIO or even how your own organization makes decisions you know that they might not understand otherwise, without getting to hear it from you,

Bob Bancroft 40:45
I’ll give a practical answer, and then I’ll give a more aspirational one. The practical answer is sometimes, the reason we’re not able to invest, it’s not because your fund isn’t great, it’s a combination of a lot of factors, and it could be how we’re currently allocated. In our case, we’re really heavily allocated to VC funds already, so the bar for us to be able to make a new one is really high. So there’s sometimes reasons that are very idiosyncratic to the allocator, that don’t necessarily mean that we don’t think that you’re a great team or that you have a great strategy. So that’s sort of my practical answer. Aspirationally, I wish that more GPs would recognize as we’re experiencing, that infusing the investment process with values and with purpose makes it stronger. It does not make it weaker.

Earnest Sweat 41:54
So true and so as you guys, we’re about to enter into the New Year. How are you all thinking about your investment focus for these it might be the next five years. So going into 20 you know everything in 2025 is setting up for 2030 any changes or perspectives you want to share there?

Bob Bancroft 42:18
Yeah, we’re so two years ago, our board approved a new strategic direction, and part of that was to affirm our organizational commitment to racial, economic and environmental justice as the three interlocking social challenges that we’re hoping to impact. And so we’re going on a parallel journey with the endowment right now, to take each of those components, and we’re starting with environmental justice, and to really translate that and contextualize that for our investments. So we’ll be doing a deep dive on environmental justice next year, and I’m really excited about that, because what I’ve found is that even among impact investors that are very conscientious about the climate or where climate is part of their mission, that the conversation tends to start and stop with CO two emissions. And that is important. So we’re not saying that it isn’t our orientation is around environmental justice, so we’re thinking about the disproportionate impact that corporate pollution, like CO two emissions, has on marginalized communities. So it is a different orientation, and we just haven’t seen a lot of guidance for investors around that. So we’re going to roll up our sleeves and see what we can put together, and then, you know, looking forward to implementing that for our portfolio and hopefully producing something that can be helpful for others.

Alexa Binns 43:59
I love this. Pay it forward. It’s like every time you create the blueprint of how to do this, you can pass it along to other allocators. It’s

Bob Bancroft 44:10
actually since you mentioned it, and I don’t know if this has been your experience with some of your other guests, but it is very much part of the culture in the impact investing community. When I first joined the foundation, I had very little exposure to this world. I had to do a lot of on the job training, and I benefited tremendously from peers in the industry that were willing to just spend time with me, or who had published some of their thought leadership in ways that I could kind of digest and then translate into part of the work that we were doing at Nathan Cummings foundation. So we’re very committed to that Pay It Forward mindset, because we have also benefited greatly from it.

Alexa Binns 44:59
And. No, I get the sense that obviously, some people have had a few more at bats at this than others, but it’s a work in progress for everybody. So you know, there’s, there’s absolutely yeah, recommendations for other LPs who are listening.

Bob Bancroft 45:18
I want them to know the water is fine. So if anybody has any kind of skepticism or fear or hesitation around impact investing, the water is fine. There are plenty of us that can help you find your way

Alexa Binns 45:35
We got a lot of water metaphors here on swimming with alligators. So

Earnest Sweat 45:40
yeah, that’s that that was actually unintentional, but let’s go with it. No, that is, that’s gonna be the episode’s name. The water is fine, excellent. Maybe a t- shirt too. And any parting thoughts for our fund managers out there as well, especially those that are doing, you know, in the impact areas,

Bob Bancroft 46:16
Anything for fund managers? Yes, yes. Well, well, certainly for those who have an impact thesis, I want them to know that Nathan Cummings foundation and many other allocators are open for business. So please, please track us down. Our OCI is bibim West Fuller, and they’re a great team to work with. We didn’t get to talk about that as much, but so please reach out to them. Get in our pipeline, even if it doesn’t fit our portfolio, we’re only one of many clients that they have, so that would be one ask. Nathan Cummings Foundation recently launched a program related investments initiative, and so this initiative gives us a little more flexibility to invest in emerging managers whose return characteristics might not meet the hurdle for the endowment. This is a more flexible tool that we can use and so also encourage managers in that sort of category to reach out.

Earnest Sweat 49:32
Bob, I just want to thank you for you and the Nathan cum foundation for being Trailblazers for continuing to innovate, even telling us about this last program that’s new, I love that, and continuing also to show your work. So thanks so much for sharing your story and continuing to do what you do. Thank you.

Bob Bancroft 49:58
Thank you. Thank you so much for. For having me appreciate the opportunity.

Alexa Binns 50:02
See you later, Allocator.