The organizations that sustain our cultural and spiritual life operate on a different financial timeline than most. A symphony orchestra planning its next season is also stewarding capital meant to support performances decades from now. A parish endowment established by a generation of faithful givers carries obligations that extend well beyond any single vestry's tenure.
Cantata is built to advise organizations stewarding capital in support of mission-driven objectives over multi-decade horizons. Our approach is to work closely with boards, vestries, finance committees, and trustees alongside their professional advisors to preserve capital across generations while funding the work that gives these organizations their purpose.
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As a fee-only Registered Investment Adviser (RIA), we are legally and ethically bound to act in our clients’ best interests. Accordingly, our recommendations are made solely with that fiduciary duty in mind (we do not earn commissions from product sales). These organizations steward funds donated by others for specific purposes, and the people who oversee those funds deserve to know that their advisor's recommendations are driven by the organization's best interests and nothing else.
Co-founder Kevin Barry, CFA®, CFP® leads Cantata's investment management and brings extensive direct experience advising foundations and endowments. Kevin's institutional portfolio work has included the Mother Cabrini Foundation, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Georgetown University, American Philosophical Society, Little League Foundation, United Way, and religious organizations across multiple denominations, including the Archdiocese of New York, The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Jewish organizations in Pittsburgh and Miami. He currently serves on the board of Chestnut Hill College where he is also the chair of the investment committee. His experience assembling alternative investment programs for large endowments translates directly to the asset allocation, risk management, and reporting needs of foundations and endowments.
Our co-founder Gregory Cheng, CWS® brings both financial leadership and deep personal roots in the performing arts and the Episcopal Church to this practice. Before co-founding Cantata, Greg spent most of his career in senior leadership roles across wealth management and financial services, driving business development, leading advisor teams, and helping position firms for growth and scale. He has also served on both the artistic side of nonprofits (as Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and a baritone in the San Francisco Opera Chorus, for example) as well as the governance side including Grace Cathedral (where he served on the board of trustees for over a decade and chaired the nominating and governance committees), the Cathedral School for Boys, Chanticleer, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, as well as several community organizations. Today, he sits on the boards of Chorus America, IlluminArts in Miami, and serves as volunteer music director for St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove, where he also serves on the finance committee. These experiences inform how our team understands the financial pressures, governance structures, and mission-driven priorities of institutional clients.
Co-founder Christina Kramlich, CFP®, CAP® brings nearly two decades of nonprofit board experience to this work. She serves on the board of Project Glimmer (a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to serving at-risk girls and women), where she previously served as board chair and finance committee chair, and has spent seven years on the audit committee of the Marin Humane Society in Marin County. Her experience sitting on both sides of the table, as a nonprofit board member and as a financial planner, gives her a practical understanding of the governance challenges, internal controls, and strategic decisions that institutional clients face.
While our practice is designed to support foundations and endowments across a range of sectors, we bring particular depth to two areas where our team has sustained professional and personal engagement.
Performing arts organizations face financial pressures that few other nonprofits share. Ticket revenue rarely covers operating costs. Orchestras, opera companies, and choruses depend on contributed revenue, government support, and endowment distributions to close structural budget gaps that tend to grow over time. Symphony orchestras rely on endowment distributions for roughly 12% of their operating budgets,* a figure that has likely only grown more important as pandemic-era reserves erode and the future of federal arts funding remains uncertain. For these organizations, endowment management is central to institutional survival.
Where we start. We listen acutely to understand an organization's particular governance dynamics before we discuss portfolio strategy. Boards may rotate frequently, finance committee members may have limited investment experience, and the competing demands of programming and fundraising can push endowment oversight to the margins. Our starting point is learning how investment decisions actually get made within the organization, then building from there. As one prospective client told us: "I like our financial advisors, but I spend more than half my time explaining to them what we do for a living." Our team brings that understanding already in place.
Why Cantata. Greg's decades of involvement with orchestras, choruses, and opera companies as a performer, artistic director, and board member give our team a fluency with the operational and cultural realities of arts organizations that many financial advisors simply don't have. We know what it means to balance artistic ambition with fiscal discipline. And Kevin's approach to endowment risk goes beyond standard asset allocation. He thinks about the specific risks an organization actually faces: What happens to a performing arts venue if building materials costs are up 50% since 2019? And when the economy contracts, demand for your services rises at the exact moment your endowment is under the most pressure—how do you build a portfolio that accounts for both?
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Churches and religious institutions carry endowment responsibilities shaped by denominational structures, canon law, and volunteer-led governance. In the Episcopal Church, for example, in overseeing a parish endowment, the vestry acts subject to applicable civil law, donor restrictions, the parish’s governing documents, the canons of the Diocese, and the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church. Any endowment committee serves by delegation from, and remains accountable to, the vestry within that broader canonical framework. The interplay between these groups, along with the finance committee, the rector, and diocesan leadership, can be a source of strength when roles are clearly defined and a source of real confusion when they are not.
Where we start. We listen acutely. Many of our conversations with religious institutions begin well before investment strategy with the kind of patient, foundational dialogue that these organizations need: helping committee members understand the difference between donor-restricted and board-designated funds, walking through Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA) obligations, and building shared language around spending policy and investment risk. Kevin's approach is to walk a board through a historical scenario: here's what happened to your endowment value during the 2008 crisis if you were taking out 5% a year, and here's how long it took to recover. That kind of pre-play helps volunteer fiduciaries make grounded decisions rather than reactive ones. The volunteer leaders who serve on vestries and endowment committees are often new to institutional investment oversight and deserve advisors who will meet them where they are.
Why Cantata. We've collectively seen a lot! Our experience with nonprofits enables us to come alongside organizations and get up-to-speed quickly on the issues that are most common. For example, we've seen governance documents where the stated priority was "capital preservation" for what should be a long-term, perpetuity-oriented portfolio. We've seen investment committees that determined spending policy rather than recommending it to the board, blurring a line that should be clear. These are the kinds of structural issues our team is equipped to help organizations identify and resolve, because getting the governance right matters as much as getting the investments right. Strong internal controls and clear governance also make organizations more durable—which is a fundraising advantage—and, as Christina has observed from her own board experience, makes it easier to attract strong board members in the first place.
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Cantata Wealth has offices in Miami, San Francisco, and Raleigh, and is available to clients nationwide. If your organization is considering engaging an investment advisor, revisiting its investment policy, or looking for a thought partner on endowment governance, we would welcome the conversation. We are, as always, ready to listen.
Sources
* League of American Orchestras, “Orchestras at a Glance” (2024).
Cantata Wealth is a fee-only Registered Investment Advisor (RIA). This content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation to buy or sell any securities. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Please consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.
