The purpose of the Charitable Funds Investment Performance Review Sub-Committee (“the Committee”) is to undertake the following tasks on behalf of the Charitable Funds Committee:
- Ensure that when investing charitable funds Trustees achieve an appropriate balance for the Charity between the two objectives of:
- a) Providing an income to help the Charity carry out its purposes effectively in the short term; and
- b) Maintaining and, if possible, enhancing the value of the invested funds, so as to enable the Charity to carry out its purpose in the longer term.
- Ensure that the following standards as defined in the Trustee Act are followed, whether they are using the investment powers in that Act or not:
- a) That the Charity is discharging its general duty of care (as described in section 1 of the Trustee Act), which is the duty to exercise such care and skill as is reasonable in the circumstances. This applies both to the use of any power of investment and to the discharge of the specific duties which the Act attaches to the use of investment powers.
- b) Secondly, that the Charity is complying with the following specific duties:
- Trustees must consider the suitability for the Charity of any investment. This duty exists at two levels. The Trustees must be satisfied that the type of any proposed investment (e.g. a common investment fund or a deposit account) is right for the Charity They also have a duty to consider whether a particular investment of that type is a suitable one for the Charity to make, based on the overall investment policy set by the Charitable Funds Committee Trustees should, at both levels, try to consider the whole range of investment options which are open to them; how far they should go here will, of course, depend on the amount of funds available for investment.
- Trustees must consider the need for diversification, i.e. having different types of investment, and different investments within each type. This will reduce the risk of losses resulting from concentrating on a particular investment or type of investment.
- Trustees must periodically review the investments of the Charity. The nature and frequency of these reviews is up to the Trustees to decide, but the reviews should be proportionate to the nature and size of the Charity's investment portfolio. To review too infrequently may result in losses or missed opportunities; chopping and changing investments too frequently may incur unnecessarily high levels of transaction charges. A review of the investments should be carried out at least once a year.
- Trustees must monitor the overall performance of the portfolio and, in so far as it is possible, compare the rate of return with returns achieved by other similar organisations. The rate of return will need to be reported annually to the Charitable Funds Committee as part of its annual report.
- Before exercising any power of investment, and when reviewing the Charity's investments, Trustees must obtain and consider proper advice from a suitably qualified adviser.
Download the Terms of Reference.