Choke Points in Endowment Capital Raising

Adapted for fund managers pitching endowments from Chapter 2 of Capital Raising by Richard C. Wilson.

A choke point is a bottleneck or scarce resource in your industry. If you controlled it, it would give you a big advantage, and others would value it too.

I learned the idea from a business growth book and used it to build the Family Office Club. Our choke points were the book on single family offices, a podcast and the FamilyOffices.com website. Other associations and conference firms came along over the years. They found it hard to compete because those positions were already held.

What choke points look like with endowments

For a manager raising from endowments, a choke point might be:

  • The data. The most complete public dataset on your asset class that endowment staff rely on.
  • The research. The paper every committee member reads before approving an allocation to your strategy.
  • The event. A recurring roundtable where endowment CIOs in your niche meet.
  • The relationships. A deep bench of trusted references among peer institutions.
  • The deal flow. Proprietary access to a type of asset allocators can't get elsewhere.

How to find yours

Ask two questions.

  1. What slows our raise down the most?
  2. What asset, if we owned it, would bring endowment allocators to us without us asking?

The answers often point to the same thing.

A choke point should pay for itself

Good choke points make progress for you on their own, and sometimes become a business inside your business. A benchmark study can bring leads and press. A roundtable can become a paid membership. A dataset can be licensed.

Two-year plan

Write down three choke points you could aim to own over the next two years. Pick one and start this quarter. Put a name and a date next to it. A choke point nobody owns on your team is just an idea.

Frequently asked questions

Is a choke point the same as a moat?

Close. A choke point is a specific scarce asset. A moat is the advantage it creates.

Can a small manager own a choke point?

Yes. Small niches often have unclaimed ones.

Does this raise compliance issues?

Research and events still need to follow marketing rules. Talk to your compliance counsel.

Sources

  1. Capital Raising, Chapter 2, Richard C. Wilson .

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Richard C. Wilson

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Endowments.com is a research resource on university, college and foundation endowments. It profiles 775 endowments, including university, college, foundation and hospital endowments, built from each institution's own reports and public filings, and runs the Endowments by Size Band benchmark study. Every figure carries its source and date.

Richard C. Wilson, founder of the Family Office Club

I started Family Office Club 19 years ago at 26, as my 12th startup and the first one that worked. All three of my daughters are in the business with me now. My father raised $1 billion for non-profits before I ever started, so I grew up watching this.

Since then: 300+ in-person events, 1,500 investors on stage, 250+ family offices created or formalized, 46 transactions off my own balance sheet, and CIO of a $180M single family office.

I am not a broker. I am not a bank. I do not charge for anything on this site. I built it because endowment figures are spread across hundreds of reports and press releases, and few places put them side by side with sources.

Text or WhatsApp me at (808) 600-9260, or email Richard@Endowments.com.

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