The governance framework of an institution plays a significant role in its overall success. Based on our work with hundreds of higher education institutions over the past 50 years, we believe that good governance is critical to the health of the institution and the positive performance of the endowment. Most people intuitively agree that “good” governance is imperative but currently there is a dearth of quantitative research available that defines and measures the difference that it can make. To rectify this and help to move the industry forward, Commonfund Institute is embarking on a new research project titled, The Commonfund-FGA Benchmarking Study of Governance in Higher Education.
The Study is the first of its kind and is being done in conjunction with Chris Merker and Fund Governance Analytics (FGA). FGA is a pioneer in the field of empirical governance research and evaluation of asset owners and operates in partnership with Marquette University. Their governance diagnostics are derived from decades of research and evaluation and have been used extensively to analyze the governance practices of public pension funds. This is the first time that these tools will be applied to higher education endowments.
