The private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) benchmark continues to be the most impactful decision when evaluating an endowment’s return versus its policy portfolio benchmark. With public equity markets outperforming private strategies in recent years, the use of a public index to represent PE/VC in a benchmark has resulted in a high bar for a diversified endowment to clear—a position that most respondents are in. This section summarizes the various approaches that endowments use for benchmarking total portfolio performance and compares endowment performance versus policy benchmark returns.

Shifts in asset allocation trends since 2022 have been more muted compared to much of prior history. The average peer allocation to public equities has increased a bit over this timeframe, but our analyses show this is not because endowments are changing their asset allocation policies to invest more heavily in public assets. This section covers this and other topics, such as the number of external investment managers and the types of investment vehicles used.

Annual spending from endowments has grown at a much higher rate than endowment asset values since 2022. The result has been a steady uptick in the effective spending rate for portfolios over this timeframe. Over the longer term, most endowments have earned more than enough to replenish spending and offset the loss in purchasing power due to inflation. This section contains analysis on this and other statistics related to the financial support that C&Us receive from their endowments.

This report provides a first look at the results of our 2025 College and University Investment Pool Returns survey, including investment pool returns and asset allocation for 157 colleges and universities.

Our biannual report summarizes asset allocation and total investment performance for 24 of Cambridge Associates’ UK foundation and endowment clients.

Our annual survey-based report summarizes returns, asset allocation, and other investment-related data for 114 foundations for the calendar year ended December 31, 2024.

While calendar year 2024 performance lagged the previous year, it remained strong, with most foundations reporting returns of near 10% or higher. However, it was also the second straight year that diversified portfolio returns fell short of an investment option with heavier public allocations. As a result, the three-year peer median return underperformed a simple blended index weighted 70% global public equity and 30% fixed income. The story was the opposite over the longer term, where private investments continued to be a primary return driver for the best-performing portfolios. The Investment Portfolio Returns section highlights these contrasting performance themes for the short-term versus long-term periods.

The primary policy benchmark for most respondents is a static-weighted blend of indexes where the weightings align exactly or closely with the asset classes and target percentages specified in the asset allocation policy. Perhaps the most consequential benchmarking decision foundations have had to make in recent years is how to represent private equity in the policy benchmark. The majority of respondents use a public index for that representation, and this cohort by and large saw significant underperformance versus their benchmark in 2024. Our Benchmarking section summarizes the various approaches that foundations use for benchmarking total portfolio performance and compares foundation performance versus policy benchmark returns.