In the report
Executive summary
Investment should be a bridge to a better future, one that gives young people a meaningful voice in shaping how it is built. Yet that bridge is crumbling under financial markets’ fixation on short-term returns, disregarding the long-term social and environmental foundations that future generations will depend on.
The status quo also means asset owners such as charitable endowments, trusts and foundations often unknowingly invest in activities that undermine their own missions. As a group of UK charities and foundations aiming to use all our capital in pursuit of our missions, we set out to change that.
The Endowments Investing Challenge was a public tender process to find a new investment service provider (ISP) to help us move up to £50 million to a fund more aligned with our missions.
We wanted something bold: a Request for Proposals (RFP) focused on intentional positive impact on future generations, with genuine representation from the young people our investment decisions would impact. We recruited a Future Generations Panel of seven 18-25-year-olds, whose strong demand for accountability influenced everyone involved and the whole process.
In September 2025, we published the RFP and received 60 applications from 55 ISPs across seven countries, representing over £11.5 trillion in assets under management. The applications were assessed on key areas: impact on future generations; organisational credibility and values alignment; financial investment fundamentals; engagement with the process.
Five shortlisted ISPs (EdenTree Investment Management, Foresight (WHEB)*, Octopus Capital, Tribe Impact Capital, and Triodos Investment Management) presented at London’s Barbican Centre in March 2026. Following a recommendation from the Future Generals Panel for their commitment to impact, transparency, close fit with the mandate and organisational alignment, Triodos Investment Management won the audience vote with their Future Generations Fund.
The Triodos Future Generations Fund was launched in 2022. It uses a framework developed by UNICEF to invest in companies that focus on child health, education, protection from violence, climate, and equality. Triodos Bank, the parent company, has been providing sustainable financial services in Europe for over 45 years.
This report summarises our findings and offers recommendations to help asset owners align their investments with their missions and help ISPs to improve their offering. Underpinning this is the urgent need for young people’s views to be listened to and acted upon as they will be the generation having to live with the impacts of today’s investment decisions.
Key findings
Working with a panel of young people demanded a level of accountability that positively influenced everyone involved and the whole process. They questioned us as asset owners on our investing process – how we make decisions, what we invest in and why. And they challenged ISPs directly about their suggested funds, pay gaps in their organisations, and their lack of response to difficult ethical issues. It brought the transparency and openness that is needed in investment decisions.
1. Young people’s voices and difficult questions were largely sidelined
Throughout the process, the Future Generations Panel stressed the need to consider how investment affects conflict, genocide, and breaches of international law, making regular reference to Israel-Palestine. The RFP was clear on weapons and armaments exclusions. Yet nearly half of applicants excluded only controversial weapons from their funds, rather than all weapons and armaments. Almost no ISPs addressed the panel’s desire to avoid companies that facilitate conflict and genocide and invest in the sustainable development of affected areas.
The RFP also prioritised future generations, but most applicants offered existing products developed in traditional, non-participatory ways. A few ISPs did engage deeply with young people to shape their offerings, and we commend them.
Recommendation – engage directly on difficult questions and open up decision-making
Asset owners should raise, and ISPs should openly discuss, uncomfortable topics like conflict, genocide, and breaches of international law – rather than avoiding them. Asset owners and ISPs should also open up decision-making to those most likely to be impacted by the investments. Embedding real participation – for example through committee seats, advisory boards, and participant assemblies – should be the norm, not the exception.
2. Trade-offs exist – but can be balanced
A key finding is that it is not currently possible to maximise positive impact for future generations and financial return while also minimising financial risk. However, impact, risk and return can be carefully balanced.
In times of financial uncertainty, asset owners and ISPs alike tend to default to deprioritising impact. Charities, endowments and foundations are well-placed to resist this. As long-term holders of capital that are not required to maximise shareholder value, they can hold their course and keep backing investments that deliver long-term environmental, social and economic impact.
Recommendation – acknowledge trade-offs and be explicit about priorities
Asset owners should have honest internal discussions about which factors matter most, communicate those priorities clearly to ISPs, and stick to them even when markets are uncertain. ISPs, in turn, should take the time to understand what trade-offs their clients are genuinely willing to accept, rather than defaulting to financial return as the only lens.
3. Traditional metrics are a fundamental problem for impact investing
The Endowments Investing Challenge deliberately left financial return expectations flexible to encourage innovation. Benchmarking nonetheless emerged as a major obstacle.
In public equities, most ISPs used the MSCI World Index or a variation of it. The Magnificent 7 (seven high-performing US technology companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft , NVIDIA, Tesla) make up over 20% of this index, yet they largely don’t qualify for impact funds. Tracking the benchmark therefore pulls portfolios towards them: several applications held high allocations to these companies, some as high as 30% of their fund. There did not appear to be a relevant benchmark for impact public equities funds. Public debt showed more consistency, whilst private markets avoided benchmarks entirely, using fixed or inflation-linked targets.
Liquidity risk also dominated discussions and was a key limitation for some partners. Only one private markets-only solution reached the shortlist, despite arguments that private markets can deliver more focused impact.
Recommendation – rethink assumptions on benchmarks and liquidity
Asset owners should consider whether mainstream benchmarks are appropriate for an impactful portfolio, and ISPs should innovate to develop more appropriate ways of benchmarking financial performance. Asset owners should also question whether they need full-portfolio liquidity given their long-term outlooks, while ISPs should offer semi-liquid or hybrid structures rather than offering only fully liquid or fully illiquid products.
4. Values increasingly align but some contradictions remain
This process showed that asset owners have meaningful options to partner with values-aligned ISPs. Nine Endowments Investing Challenge applicants were certified B Corps. Our analysis of applicants’ ownership and governance models suggested around half may have some degree of alignment to asset owners, albeit with a lot of variation among these. All five shortlisted ISPs were entirely focused on impact or sustainable investment.
However, pay gaps are a major contradiction for organisations that present themselves as values-driven. Of 22 ISPs reporting UK median gender pay gaps, only two were below 20% and nearly all were far worse than the 12.8% UK average. Just six applicants reported ethnicity pay gaps, even though upcoming legal requirements are likely to require many of them to do so. Transparency was poor overall, with most ISPs only reporting what is required by law.
Recommendation – align organisational values with investment values
Asset owners should scrutinise ISPs’ ownership structure, governance, and internal culture (including pay gaps), not just the specific funds they invest in, and should move money to better aligned ISPs. ISPs should clearly explain how their internal structure aligns to asset owner values, voluntarily report pay gaps (beyond the legal requirement), and take action to close them.
Conclusion
Since the Endowments Investing Challenge event, partners have committed approximately £20 million to the shortlisted ISPs, including over £12 million to Triodos. We expect further investment commitments from partners and others, but we do not expect to reach our initial target of £50 million, which reflects the state of the sector.
Triodos was selected by the Future Generations Panel in large part because they consider impact on young people within their investment process. We need more ISPs to be accountable to those affected by their investments, and more asset owners to demand it.
The Future Generations Panel were an inconvenient youth, in a crucial way. They had high demands for the level of impact they expected, asked uncomfortable questions to ISPs, and challenged the way asset owners think about their investments. Similarly, asset owners can and should be an inconvenient investor to ISPs: engaging robustly on ethical issues and asking for products that deliver high impact alongside reasonable financial returns.
Now is an important time to ask inconvenient questions. AI, defence, and social media are all booming investments but are unlikely to align with charitable missions. When the market can’t deliver a matching level of financial return for investments that prioritise positive impact, which should we be willing to compromise on: impact or return? And is financial growth the primary purpose of charities, endowments and foundations?
Endowments Investing Challenge partners will continue to work, individually and collectively, to align our investments with our charitable missions. The social and environmental challenges we face have arguably intensified since we started this process. We look forward to working with ISPs, other asset owners, and the investment industry more broadly to respond to the Endowments Investing Challenge.
*In September 2026, Guinness Global Investors completed an acquisition of Foresight Capital Management (FCM), the public markets division of Foresight Group. This transaction formally absorbed the WHEB fund that applied to the EIC. For clarity we only refer to WHEB throughout the rest of the report.