How I Invest with David Weisburd
E148: TIFF's $8B Portfolio Revealed: Strategies Institutions Need
21 Mar 2025
In this episode of How I Invest, I speak with Brendon Parry, Head of Private Markets, Deputy CIO, and Managing Director at TIFF Investment Management. Brendon shares insights on TIFF’s mission to serve nonprofit institutions through tailored investment solutions. He discusses the importance of private market investments, the legacy of leaders like David Swensen, and how TIFF partners with foundations to achieve long-term financial goals. Tune in for actionable strategies and valuable perspectives from a seasoned investment professional.
Full Episode
I think early on, I would consider sort of a wider range of investment opportunities, willing to take certain risks that I wouldn't now, but maybe those risks depended more heavily on a very specific future state of the world. Hey, I was confident about it. The experts I talked to were confident about it, but there were fewer paths, again, fewer paths to victory, fewer ways to win.
And so you really needed to believe that you could predict the future a bit better. Tell me about how David Swenson from the Yale Endowment got involved in TIFF.
TIFF has been fortunate enough to have involvement of a lot of fantastic people over the years from the nonprofit community. It all started with the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundations back when TIFF was founded in 1991. And David Swenson, a TIF board member, Hall of Famer, and he was involved with TIF in its very early days.
I think there are myriad reasons why any CIO or other senior executive typically gets involved with TIF. And they're typically CIOs or senior execs at larger nonprofits, and they come sit on our board. I think a fairly universal one is that they have a desire to serve a broad array of nonprofits worldwide.
while at the same time getting to share ideas and best practices with other accomplished investors who sit around the table. So I had not yet joined TIFF when David was on our board, but I have been told over the years of his many contributions and lasting contributions from asset allocation, help recruiting other great board members and clients.
Potentially, most importantly, particularly in those really early days, he helped TIFF access great closed managers just as we were ramping up. And a fun fact I learned fairly recently, so I haven't verified this, and if I'm wrong, I apologize.
I was recently told that in the first edition of his famous pioneering portfolio management, Swenson called out TIFF as actually one of a very few number of allocators or fund of funds that he thought merited consideration by serious investors. So instrumental board member in the early days. And thankfully, we have a great board still of amazing people
CIOs and other senior execs at a great list of nonprofits. And tell me about TIFF. What is TIFF exactly? Sure. So TIFF's existed over 30 years to provide investment solutions, primarily to nonprofit institutions. We're really specialized as an outsource chief investment officer and specialize in private market solutions.
When we started, again, MacArthur and Rockefeller Foundations looked at the investment landscape of the non-mega nonprofits of the day, and they saw the lack of scale, the inability to find and access the best investment opportunities. And they saw really high fees for pretty bad investments. They created TIFF to help solve each of those issues.
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