We invested funds to generate a return of $126,000 in interest and $1.8M in investment returns (for the Carl Shulman discretionary fund), while freeing up money held in old restrictions.
$1.8M in investment returns for a fund that initially started at $5M is quite high—that’s roughly a 36% return in a year. How was that investment return achieved? Also, this is the first time I’m hearing about this discretionary fund. Are there any reports of payouts made by this fund, or what the plans are for it for the future?
It’s invested in unleveraged index funds, but was out of the market for the pandemic crash and bought in at the bottom. Because it’s held with Vanguard as a charity account it’s not easy to invest as aggressively as I do my personal funds for donation, in light of lower risk-aversion for altruistic investors than those investing for personal consumption, although I am exploring options in that area.
The fund has been used to finance the CEA donor lottery, and to make grants to ALLFED and Rethink Charity (for nuclear war research). However, it should be noted that I only recommend grants for the fund that I think aren’t a better fit for other funding sources I can make recommendations to, and often with special circumstances or restricted funding, and grants it has made should not be taken as recommendations from me to other donors to donate to the same things at the margin. [For the object-level grants, although using donor lotteries is generally sensible for a wide variety of donation views.]
I’m curious if you have a target % return for this fund per year with your investing, and what your target % return is for your personal funds for donation? I also wonder if you think EAs you know perform better with their investment returns than the average investor.
Hi Brian, Thanks for your question! I’m not sure how much we can comment on the investment strategy or grantmaking of this fund, but I’ll flag your questions to Carl.
I’m curious to learn more about the following:
$1.8M in investment returns for a fund that initially started at $5M is quite high—that’s roughly a 36% return in a year. How was that investment return achieved? Also, this is the first time I’m hearing about this discretionary fund. Are there any reports of payouts made by this fund, or what the plans are for it for the future?
It’s invested in unleveraged index funds, but was out of the market for the pandemic crash and bought in at the bottom. Because it’s held with Vanguard as a charity account it’s not easy to invest as aggressively as I do my personal funds for donation, in light of lower risk-aversion for altruistic investors than those investing for personal consumption, although I am exploring options in that area.
The fund has been used to finance the CEA donor lottery, and to make grants to ALLFED and Rethink Charity (for nuclear war research). However, it should be noted that I only recommend grants for the fund that I think aren’t a better fit for other funding sources I can make recommendations to, and often with special circumstances or restricted funding, and grants it has made should not be taken as recommendations from me to other donors to donate to the same things at the margin. [For the object-level grants, although using donor lotteries is generally sensible for a wide variety of donation views.]
Got it, thanks for the context!
I’m curious if you have a target % return for this fund per year with your investing, and what your target % return is for your personal funds for donation? I also wonder if you think EAs you know perform better with their investment returns than the average investor.
Hi Brian, Thanks for your question! I’m not sure how much we can comment on the investment strategy or grantmaking of this fund, but I’ll flag your questions to Carl.