Leading College Scholarship Foundations Benefit from Institutional Investor Forum
By Stephen Dalton

As the name of the conference implies, the Institutional Investor Education Benefit Forum seeks to build a foundation of new talent by getting the investment community to give back.

The conference, produced by Opal Financial Group (www.opalgroup.net), will bring together representatives of public, corporate, Taft-Hartley pensions funds, endowments and foundations to discuss and educate on topics covering a wide range of subjects and discussing timely issues impacting the investment community.

The conference is unique because Opal Financial Group will donate a significant portion of the profits to both the Hispanic College Fund and the Thurgood Marhsall College Fund. These funds strive to provide scholarships and financial assistance to qualified Hispanic and African-American students who otherwise could not afford a college education.

Dennis Cotto, Partner with Lovell, Mitchell & Barth law firm, a Trustee for the Hispanic College Fund, and a former Trustee for the District of Columbia Retirement System assisted in coordinating the event.

He said, “As a former trustee and someone who has looked at the advanced wealth that exists in the public pension fund space, I realized there was an opportunity for the investment community to give back. One of the most painful ironies is that most trustees running billions of dollars in pension funds, sometimes lack the funds to send their kids to college, nor do their members.”

“I thought it would be a great opportunity to get the working-class people involved in these pension funds together and leverage their assets so the investment community could give back and serve the very members they represent.”

These college funds were selected through a series of defined criteria. Both programs value awarding scholarships and grants based on need, student accomplishments, and performance. For each charity only 10% of every dollar goes to overhead costs. The other 90% directly funds scholarships.

The Hispanic College Fund and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund help qualified students through scholarships, symposiums, and professional mentoring. One of these professional mentoring programs includes a program with NASA, where for example, a prospective aerospace engineer could meet and network with individuals for his or her professional career.

Close to half the proceeds of the overall conference will go to the mentioned college fund charities, but there will also be further charitable components to the conference.

Separate from the conference events is a charitable component where Cotto has assembled fiduciaries from across the country. The event will be asking trustees and fiduciaries to make charitable contributions to both plans. An awards luncheon during the conference will acknowledge the largest donors.

Abe Wellington, CEO of Opal Financial Group said of the event, “We look forward to providing a great conference for the further education of investment plan managers and trustees. We are even more proud that we can do this, while we're helping to contribute to these two great charities.”

The conference will also include an evening fundraising event where investment managers will have a chance to mingle with representatives from different public plans. All benefits, again, will go directly to the charities.

All proceeds donated to the college funds will go to increasing the amount of scholarships awarded. Cotto recalls reviewing applications from students for the Hispanic College Fund, saying “I’ve realized we just don’t have enough dollars. There are so many talented kids; we just don’t have enough dollars to fund all of their scholarships.”

“The need is there, the talent pool is there, what we’re missing are the additional funds to make these kids’ dreams come true. It’s heartbreaking to look at a poor kid, who is well qualified and has the abilities to be very successful, and say we just don’t have the funds to help you.”

Cotto stresses that the donations raised for the charities will go a long way, but his hopes for the lasting legacy of this conference rest in forging new relationships and bridges between these charities and the investment community. This is also the first time the Hispanic College Fund and Thurgood Marshall College Fund have worked together.

With this conference, Cotto and Opal Financial Group plan to build an infrastructure for the financial community. The truth of the matter is that there can’t be successful emerging managers without qualified people to lead those firms. Cotto recalls the story of a friend currently running a large Hispanic-owned money management firm.

“My friend is saying he doesn’t know who will inherit his firm. He wants to bring in other Latinos to take his place, however there is currently only a small pool to draw from.”

The contributions pooled and contributed at Opal Financial Group’s Institutional Investor Education Benefit Forum will be paid back with a brighter more diverse future of emerging managers and talented investment professionals.

The conference will take place at the Westin Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio, TX on May 5-7, 2008. The three-day event will revolve around discussions on a broad range of investment topics, challenges and strategies. Topics of discussion will include investing in infrastructure, indexing trends, real investments, developments in the fixed income sector, and emerging managers.

Opal Financial Group produces educational conferences for the institutional investing community around the globe. Since its inception in 1998, Opal Financial Group has been dedicated to bringing together industry leaders for the meaningful exchange of information and networking opportunities