Basics

(If you are not already familiar with the concepts of commingled investments and unitization, please refer to Appendix A which provides an overview of these concepts.)

The vocabulary of endowment management unfortunately overlaps with terms used in investments, so you will want to pay attention to the terminology in hopes of avoiding confusion.

Account: Each endowment managed by UnitTracker is represented by an account. The account should represent all the assets in the endowment, regardless of whether they are managed by a single investment firm or investment account. The value of the UnitTracker account is intended to represent the sum of all assets in the endowment. Evaluating the current value of all assets in the endowment is easy when the assets are invested in publicly traded, liquid investments. Valuation is more complex when assets like real estate or illiquid investments are involved, but that is beyond the scope of this guide.

Fund: A fund in UnitTracker represents an individually tracked gift, such as an endowed scholarship or other purpose-specific gift whose income is to be dedicated to a purpose specified by the donor. A fund may consist of a single gift, given all at once, or may continue receive additional gifts over time. Each contribution to a fund is referred to as a purchase.

Purchase: Each donation to a fund is represented by a purchase of units. The purchase is tied to a specific fund and a specific date.

Account Value: The value of the account on a specified day. Typically, this is exactly the value reported by the brokerage firm holding the account. For accounts representing multiple brokerage accounts, this is the sum of brokerage account values on the given day.