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Investment Strategy & Asset Allocation

We believe asset allocation is a significant determinant of financial outcomes and impact opportunities. We start with your financial and impact goals and build a portfolio designed to pursue them.

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Asset Allocation Built Around Your Goals

Our process begins by translating your goals into the building blocks that drive portfolio construction: the liquidity you need, the growth you seek, and the level of market volatility you can comfortably tolerate. 

For families and individuals, those goals are personal: 

  • lifestyle spending,
  • education
  • retirement 
  • legacy

For foundations and endowments, they are organizational:

  • grantmaking
  • operations 
  • the long-term health of the corpus
  • opportunities to advance the mission

Impact objectives are defined alongside financial ones, so the two are integrated from the start. The result is a strategic asset allocation grounded in long-term capital market assumptions, diversified across asset classes, and designed to manage risk while pursuing your goals and your vision for a better future.

A Purpose Driven Framework

For families and individuals, our purpose-driven approach organizes your portfolio into three building blocks, each matched to a specific spending goal and time horizon.

Sustaining Allocation

The long-term core of your portfolio is designed to pursue growth in support of lifetime goals such as retirement and legacy. This is where public stocks, community notes and private impact investments can do their work.

Glide Path

For finite future goals with a known timeline (a home purchase, a child’s education…etc.) allocations gradually shift toward stability and liquidity as the spending date approaches.

Spending Reserve

Near-term spending needs are held in money market funds and high-quality, liquid fixed income. The reserve is designed to provide stability to fund ongoing lifestyle expenses so you don’t sell volatile investments during a market downturn.

Built Around Your Mission

For foundations and endowments, allocation starts with your Investment Policy Statement, spending policy, and time horizon – whether perpetuity or planned spend-down. We hold risk-controlled assets to cover multiple years of grantmaking and operating needs. This avoids the need to sell into a downturn. The remainder pursues the long-term growth needed to sustain your portfolio.

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Discipline Through Cycles

We raise cash strategically based on market conditions. When the stock market is strong, we source cash from public stocks. During downturns, we draw on lower-volatility assets like cash and bonds instead. This prevents selling stocks at depressed prices, allowing them the opportunity to recover. The Veris Investment Committee continuously monitors market conditions and guides the timing of these decisions.

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Private Markets

Private and other illiquid investments can deepen a portfolio’s impact and may provide financial upside. We set recommended allocation ranges for illiquid investments based on your spending needs, and phase in allocations across multiple fund vintages over several years, to manage liquidity and diversification across market cycles.

Explore Related Services

Asset allocation is one part of a larger process. See how Veris researches managers, integrates your values, and serves institutions.

Impact, Integrated

Impact isn’t a sleeve at the edge of your portfolio. Strategy selection within each asset class integrates values-alignment at the pace and depth you choose.

Let’s design a strategy around what matters to you.

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