The Unity Foundation of La Porte County (Foundation), together with our investment adviser, Mason Investment Advisory Services (Mason), continued our work in alignment with the long term goal of the foundation to keep our funds invested in a portfolio of assets that allows us to meet our grant spending target, cover fees, while staying ahead of inflation.

Inflation has been a big part of the story of the investment marketplace over the last two years as the annual rate reached a record level of 9.1% in June of 2022, providing a bleak outlook for what was to come in 2023. What the market actually offered in 2023 was a robust number of opportunities to generate positive returns from most investment sectors.

Amongst the largest sources of returns for the year are the familiar names that we use in our everyday lives including Alphabet Inc (parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms (parent company of Facebook). A surge in the stock prices of these companies was part of a larger revolution taking shape in the technology sector. Artificial Intelligence, a recent innovation introduced to the market, allows for the ability of software and machinery to adjust to new inputs and learn from previous experience. Many of the previously mentioned companies released products during the year that were supported by the technology. Nvidia, a leader in the Artificial Intelligence revolution through its processing chips that make the technology accessible, returned a stunning 239% to investors during the year.

The foundation’s investment portfolio is inclusive of all of the previously mentioned companies and many more, thanks to Mason’s investment approach to investment diversification across several different sectors of the market. As reported by Mason, the foundation’s permanent investment pool returned 14.9% in 2023, exceeding our benchmark of inflation plus 6.5% for grant distribution and fees by 4.6%, affording us another year of progression towards our long term goal.

This chart displays how the foundation’s permanent investment pool returns compare to the average returns of funds with an equity allocation between 70% to 85%, produced by Morningstar as the Equity Biased Growth Reference Point. While the long term goal of the foundation is to use the investment pool to make grant distributions and cover fees while keeping its rate of return above inflation, the below chart shows that the foundation’s long term returns compare favorably to the returns of funds with similar stock/bond mixes.

Disclosures

Equity Biased Growth Reference Point

This reference point, produced by Morningstar as “Allocation 70% to 85% Equity”, consists of portfolios that seek to provide both capital appreciation and income and maintain a relatively higher equity exposure. These portfolios are dominated by domestic holdings and have 70-85% of assets in equities and the remainder in fixed income and cash. As of 12/31/2023 this reference point was comprised of 82 mutual funds.