The Concordia Lutheran Schools of Omaha Foundation (Concordia), which was established to accept endowment gifts and works in partnership with the School Board of Directors and Administration. This partnership is tasked to ensure that no potential student is turned away because a family is unable to pay tuition.
The Concordia Foundation was founded in the year 2002 and re-energized in 2015 to provide financial support and stability for the Gospel proclamation activities of Concordia today and into the future.
Your gift(s) may be given in several ways. For example, cash will make an impact today, pledges will make an impact tomorrow, and endowment gifts will make an impact forever, with earnings on endowment assets of the Foundation sent to the school annually. However you choose to make your contribution(s), all gifts will serve to help a student graduate.
How does the Concordia Endowment grow?
The answer is through your gifts and applying sound investment practices to the stewardship of your gifts. The Concordia School Board of Directors has created a Foundation with its own separate Board of Directors from the school. The foundation Board then has established an Investment Committee focused on applying sound investment practices to the stewardship of your gifts. An Investment Policy Statement is then adopted by the Board, and individuals-experienced in asset management-are appointed to the committee. The committee then engages independent investment advisors to assist the committee in investing the endowment funds.
What is Concordia's policy for ensuring good stewardship of endowment funds?
The Foundation Board of Directors has adopted an Investment Policy Statement that includes the following:
- Creation of an investment committee to provide direct oversight of the endowment fund assets management and the quarterly reporting of such activity to the Board of Directors.
- A diversified asset allocation of 60% equity/40% fixed income.
- A spending policy of up to 5% per year of the beginning-of-year fund corpus.
- Engagement of an investment advisor who invests the assets in accordance with the policy.
As depicted in the charts, the Lord has blessed Concordia, through an endowment fund of $3.0 million as of December 31, 2021, and a solid investment performance as compared to the benchmark. The benchmark is provided by Morningstar on a 60% equity/40% fixed income allocation of market performance of the assets allocated in the same manner as Concordia's asset allocation.
Since 2016, the Foundation has added $1,503,000 to the endowment through investment performance and distributed $605,000 to the school. New gifts since 2016 amounted to $1,250,000.
What Is a Foundation?
A private foundation, such as the one Concordia Lutheran Schools of Omaha has established, is a nonprofit organization that typically provides funding and support through donations from individuals and/or entities. A board of directors oversees the assets, primary endowment gifts and is responsible for receiving charitable gifts, managing and investing assets, filing tax returns, and handling other administrative reporting requirements.