In an evolving financial landscape where institutions find themselves with little financial flexibility, how can advancement teams collaborate with business officers and legal counsel to maximize the use of restricted resources? Panelists will share practical approaches for both loosening fund restrictions and leveraging restricted and internally committed balances to address financial needs. They will also cover effective strategies to engage stakeholders in deploying underutilized funds, developing contingency plans, and lessening the financial impact of recent federal directives. This session will conclude with a discussion on innovative uses of AI that can help ensure fund deployment aligns with donor intent and enhances institutional financial resilience.

In an evolving financial landscape where institutions find themselves with little financial flexibility, how can advancement teams collaborate with business officers and legal counsel to maximize the use of restricted resources? Panelists will share practical approaches for both loosening fund restrictions and leveraging restricted and internally committed balances to address financial needs. They will also cover effective strategies to engage stakeholders in deploying underutilized funds, developing contingency plans, and lessening the financial impact of recent federal directives. This session will conclude with a discussion on innovative uses of AI that can help ensure fund deployment aligns with donor intent and enhances institutional financial resilience.

With a new U.S. administration in office, continued geopolitical volatility, higher interest rates, sticky inflation, and pricey equity markets, many higher education endowments are facing a more complicated investment landscape. This session is designed to help you cut through the noise and focus on what matters most for your portfolio today. Speakers will explore emerging strategies, highlight how approaches may differ depending on endowment size, and offer practical ways to evaluate and explain portfolio shifts. The session will also help you consider how to evaluate whether your investments align with your institution’s spending needs, risk tolerance, and time horizon.

Strong governance is essential for endowments navigating today’s uncertain environment. This session will help investment committees, boards, and senior staff assess their current governance structures, clarify fiduciary roles, and evaluate management models to ensure alignment with mission and long-term sustainability. Drawing on real-world examples from colleges and universities, speakers will explore how high-performing committees balance oversight and delegation, strengthen decision-making, and adapt policies for evolving needs. Attendees will gain practical insights and tools to refresh their governance approach—enhancing clarity, performance, and accountability across their endowment and investment programs.

With yields starting to come down, “safe” assets may no longer be safe for your endowment’s long-term health. The endowment can be better source of support for schools if liquidity is managed properly and with an eye toward long-term growth. This session challenges CFOs to rethink the role of cash and bonds, quantify the opportunity cost of excess liquidity, and explore the value of incorporating illiquid assets strategically. Participants will leave with actionable tools to assess how much liquidity is too much—and how to strike the right balance between stability today and sustainability tomorrow.

Higher education is undergoing a period of transformation that will be shaped by evolving student expectations, the rise of hybrid learning formats, and accelerating technological change. As universities adapt, their endowments will continue to play a vital role in providing stability, fostering innovation, and sustaining long-term priorities. Drawing on BlackRock’s research paper, Meeting the Challenge of the New Regime in Endowment Portfolios, this session explores how institutions can reorganize their investment strategies while remaining aligned with the changing priorities of the universities they support. Attendees will learn how to implement dynamic portfolio construction, rethink diversification, leverage active management and alternatives, and align governance and risk frameworks to meet their long-term objectives. Endowment leaders will be given the practical tools and advice they need to manage through these structural shifts in global markets.

Over the past quarter century, the endowment model has undergone a structural evolution shaped as much by the contraction of public markets as by the expansion of private ones. The last calendar year, 2025, in particular has tested the resilience of many endowment portfolios and higher education institutions. Governments have reduced their direct and indirect support; public capital markets have weathered substantial uncertainty; and private market distributions have remained subdued, creating pressure on cash flows. Endowment fiduciaries are reassessing asset allocation with fresh urgency. Join us to examine the longer-term evolution of both markets and endowment portfolios.

This session provides an overview of the results of the 2025 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, the most comprehensive analysis of endowment investment returns, asset allocations, and governance policies and practices at U.S. higher education institutions and affiliated foundations.

Experts will cover how endowments are managed to provide a steady and reliable source of funding over the long term. This session will also explain the basic structure of endowment funds; laws governing endowments, donor restrictions and governance; investment management; and current economic and political pressures that impact endowments.