Covenant College Endowment

Covenant College Endowment

Covenant College was founded in 1955 as the denominational college of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and is a private liberal arts institution situated on Lookout Mountain, Georgia. The endowment's fiduciary oversight is shared between the Covenant College Foundation and two named committee leaders: Chair Beth Anderson Nedelisky and committee member Maurice Perry, a Managing Director at Ascension Investment Management. President Brad Voyles and Treasurer Mike Kramer, who also serves as a director and audit committee chair for the publicly traded Covenant Logistics Group, complete the named governance layer. The endowment operates a two-pronged strategy centered on fund-of-funds commitments and natural-resource allocations. Its direct-ownership portfolio reveals a distinctly local real-asset bias: the institution holds campus land parcels along Scenic Highway, a commercial property at Carter Hall, the Dora Maclellan Brown Memorial Chapel, and a mixed-use building at Apollo Road, all on Lookout Mountain. The portfolio is cross-connected to the Chattanooga business community through historical leadership ties to Covenant Logistics Group. The endowment participates in the NACUBO benchmarking study and maintains institutional memberships in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges. Sister entities within the denomination include Covenant Theological Seminary. The institution also runs a donor recognition program, The Heritage Society, for estate-plan giving that funnels into the foundation and a separate economic-development arm, The Chalmers Center. Covenant College's structure is unusual among small-college endowments for its concentrated in-town real estate footprint and the cross-pollination of its board with a publicly traded logistics company. The investment committee's tie to Ascension Investment Management links the $72.5 million pool to the broader faith-based institutional investment ecosystem, giving the college access to manager selection and fund-of-funds gatekeeping that typically sits at larger endowments.