Page 13 - RFCUNY-2010AnnualReport

ERISA Committee The Employee Benefits Committee (ERISA Committee) was established by the Board in 2010 to meet the procedural prudence standard required by ERISA for the fiduciary oversight of the Foundation’s 403(b) pension plan and other employee benefit plans subject to ERISA.

The Committee performs functions that include: interpreting provisions of the plan; overseeing general administration; adopting procedures; deciding claims; and hiring attorneys, accountants and investment consultants and other specialists as appropriate.

The Committee engaged the investment consultants to review the funds offered by TIAA-CREF, the Foundation’s 403(b) plan fund manager. Following extensive consultation and review, the Foundation has revamped its offerings, adding several non-TIAA-CREF vehicles, dropping certain TIAA-CREF funds and adding other TIAA-CREF funds not previously offered in order to maximize choice, performance, and safety.

Experience Survey The comprehensive experience survey we conducted among both PIs and employees last year demonstrated a high level of satisfaction with the work of the Foundation. At the same time, the comments that respondents made shone a light on several areas in which we could make improvements or introduce new capabilities. One of the most critical is easy access to basic information on our web site. In order to address many of those comments we have redesigned our web site, improving navigation, reducing redundancy, and incorporating a robust FAQ feature.

Related Entities

230 W 41 St LLC Operation of our headquarters building at 230 West 41st Street continues to go well. Despite a brutal winter, the building is in excellent physical condition and tenants express general satisfaction. The depressed economy and its severe impact on commercial buildings persist, yet we still enjoy a high occupancy rate and a strong cash flow. The latter is particularly important, as it helps fund RF operations.

Capital improvements have been made to elevators, sewer lines, and air conditioning systems to address health and safety matters, new local laws, and to improve the building’s general appeal to prospective tenants.

We responded to a new City ordinance that requires commercial buildings to develop and imple-ment a plan for allowing bicycle access by converting a small retail space into bicycle storage. So far that facility has been underutilized. We hope that with the advent of warmer weather, more tenants will take advantage.

Another new local law required us to conduct an inventory of power consumption by tenants, which our leasing agent recently completed.

GrantsPlus GrantsPlus is an enterprise established by the Foundation to serve the grant administration needs of not-for-profit organizations. We are happy to report that this is shaping up to be the best year in GrantsPlus’s brief history. Earlier active marketing activity has resulted in heightened interest by the not-for-profit sector. Satisfaction among our client base has been passed on to other organizations, which then seek us out for services. Existing customers are signing up for repeat business. And we have secured new clients as a result of Internet searches.