For Prospective Clients

We believe that:

• Third-party advice should not be tainted with conflict, real or potential.
• We advise fiduciaries and, therefore, accept a fiduciary responsibility to act only in the best interests of our clients and their beneficiaries.
• Our advice will be offered proactively and will be grounded in acceptable theory and, to the extent practicable, supported by empirical evidence.
• Our clients will benefit most from a concentration of our efforts on strategic planning and investment manager research.
• The benefits of significant employee ownership accrue to our clients as well as our employees.

Consulting Approach

Our approach is to serve as an adjunct to Staff which serves at the pleasure of the Board. We provide a very hands-on consulting approach, typically speaking with our clients at least once per week. Our approach integrates consistent assumptions, policies and benchmarks throughout the application of all of our disciplines – asset allocation, manager structure, manager selection and performance evaluation.

We view ourselves as our clients’ co-fiduciary. Although we do not exercise any discretionary control or authority, we give advice and alternatives on the investment decisions of our clients for compensation and, on this basis, consider ourselves to be our clients’ co-fiduciaries. Our explicit acceptance of co-fiduciary responsibility is an important cornerstone of our founding principles – one that distinguishes us from other consulting firms that tend to sidestep this issue. We will act with the same prudence and diligence expected of fiduciaries, provide empirical and theoretical support for our recommendations, and respect the confidentiality of our client-consultant relationship.

In our relationship with money managers, we play the role of client advocate. We do not accept any revenues from money managers. Furthermore, we give all managers equal opportunity to compete for our clients’ business, provided that they comply with our clients’ standards and our information requirements. Along with the Board, Staff, and your money managers, we are members of a team whose objective is to maximize the risk-adjusted return of the Fund’s investments.

Business Philosophy

Our business effort is directed towards the large, sophisticated long-term investor, typically with assets over $500 million. The only exception we make for the asset size requirement is for Bay Area eleemosynary clients and foundations. Our goal is to build a client base composed of a small number of intensive relationships, diversified among public and corporate retirement funds, wealthy families, and educational, religious and charitable institutions. We will not become a “big” consulting organization; instead, we will concentrate on providing the best consulting services to a limited number of clients. We, therefore, envision our client to consultant ratio to be low – an average of no more than eight to ten retainer clients per consultant. With our current staffing, the firm limit on client relationships is 40. The maximum number of clients that can be assigned to a consultant is 12. The majority of our consultants currently have less than eight clients in their book of business.