Long-Duration Trusts and Endowments

Abstract

Overseers of endowments and long–duration trusts should focus on how they can use cash from these funds to serve the owners' or beneficiaries' current spending needs without a negative impact on future withdrawals to meet future spending needs. As the ultimate objective of all investment portfolios is to provide spendable cash over some time frame particular to the owner's or beneficiary's circumstances, paying attention to the fecundity, or the fruitfulness, of long–duration portfolios would seem to make good sense. Cash withdrawals, effectively the fruit of a portfolio, can come from dividends, interest, portfolio asset sales, or some combination of all three. A focus on the fecundity of a typical endowment or long–duration trust fund leads to several useful insights.