We apologize for the significant delay in reporting the February performance and market values for the Common Endowment Fund. We know these delays create problems for you, and for your congregation’s reporting and accounting, and your time is valuable.
We expect to have the February valuation completed this week, with the final report and balances posted next week. Once posted, we’ll notify you in an email to this address. There is a chance the delay may affect the timing of first quarter payouts in April. If this is the case, we will also notify you by email.
The root cause of this delay stems from a valuation error with the December CEF NAV, itself due to the funding of a new investment manager mandate that was not updated for the December month-end valuation. Adjusting for this in our systems once discovered in early March is taking far more time to complete than we expected, particularly given the number of accounts impacted.
These errors will be much less likely with our new Common Endowment Fund administration and website. As you may know, we are currently in the process of transitioning custody of CEF assets to US Bank, and responsibility for NAV calculation and congregational reporting to HWA International. This will include a new congregational reporting portal – along with a new UUCEF.org website. The new site is currently in design, and we hope to launch it in early summer. This new administrative and reporting setup will improve reporting time and significantly reduce the possibility of future valuation errors.
Mean-time, we know this is frustrating for you, and we are sorry. It’s also frustrating for the CEF team – particularly as there are so many good and important things happening in and around the Fund. Please reach out to us at shelbert@uua.org and mjensen@uua.org if you have any questions.