Investments

When it was founded in 1955, the Wolfson Foundation’s investments were based on Great Universal Stores shares, a group of companies including clothing and furniture manufacturers, retail chains and mail-order businesses. The Foundation’s assets were diversified in the 1990s.

Our charitable objectives apply to our investments as well as our grant-making. Our investment portfolio allows us to continue to support excellent projects in the areas we fund.

We manage our investments to exist in perpetuity. This means that we aim to make sure that our portfolio permanently keeps its real value (the value after allowing for inflation), and maintain our real levels of grant-making in the long term.

To maximise and maintain our grant-making, we therefore allocate funds on a total return basis, counting capital gains on our investments as well as income earned from them.

Our long-term investment objective is an average annual total return of UK CPI + 4%. The Wolfson Foundation’s current portfolio value is approximately £1 billion.

Our trustees aim to distribute at least 4% of the funds each year. This means we have awarded an average of over £35–40 million a year in recent years.

Managing our investments

To achieve our target total returns, our trustees accept a medium level of risk on the management of the portfolio.

The portfolio includes significant holdings in assets that are not publicly traded, such as private equity and alternative assets. The trustees consider that the size of the portfolio and the long-term nature of the funds allows the Foundation to invest in these assets. This is balanced by minimum levels of cash to make sure we can honour our grant-making commitments.

Responsible investment underpins our investment strategy and is a key factor in selecting our fund managers. We work with our fund managers to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Because of this, we have a policy of not investing directly in fossil fuel extractors or tobacco companies.

We are a signatory to the Funder Commitment on Climate Change.