Prime Capital Financial taps Glenmede veteran to lead new foundations and endowments unit

Prime Capital Financial has opened a dedicated endowments and foundations practice, hiring Mark Hays away from Glenmede to serve as its president.

The Overland Park, Kansas-based advisory firm's newly launched institutional unit gives family foundations, museums, schools, health-focused foundations and nonprofit endowments a specialized point of access to investment management, impact-strategy work and governance guidance.

Prior to Prime Capital, Hays spent nearly seven years at Glenmede, where he built out the firm's mission-aligned investing business and worked with endowments, foundations, families and institutions on both portfolio and impact questions. With close to two decades' experience in institutional and values-based investing, his financial services career counts earlier stops at Cambridge Associates and J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

"Endowments and foundations deserve a true partner who can match institutional-caliber expertise with real personal attention, and we've already been building that capability across our platform," said Glenn Spencer, Prime Capital's chief executive.

He added that Hays gives the firm the leadership needed to "bring it all together, scale it, and deliver it to organizations at a level few firms in this space can match."

"My North Star has always been how capital can be used to create lasting impact," Hays said, noting how he was pulled by "the quality of [Prime Capital's] people, its entrepreneurial culture and the opportunity to build something distinctive for mission-driven organizations."

The firm's new institutional offering rests on three legs: institutional investment management and outsourced chief investment officer, or OCIO, services covering asset allocation, manager selection, risk analysis and reporting; impact strategy work that helps organizations align portfolios and grantmaking with their mission while holding to fiduciary duty; and governance advisory aimed at strengthening boards, investment committees and philanthropic operations.

Read more: Endowments and foundations turn to alternatives as confidence in return targets fades

Prime Capital is pitching the unit primarily at organizations with between $5 million and $250 million in assets, which it argues are increasingly squeezed by market complexity, governance obligations and reporting demands.

Hays plans to draw on the firm's existing institutional and centralized resources at the outset, with dedicated staff joining this fall and the team continuing to grow into 2027.

Cerulli Associates projects the OCIO industry will roughly double from more than $3.3 trillion at the end of 2024 to $5.6 trillion by 2029, with nearly $1.3 trillion of that growth coming from institutions adopting the model for the first time. 

Read more: RIA moves: Cresset taps Morgan Stanley alum to lead OCIO business

Other RIAs have moved to capture a piece of that expansion: Atlanta-based HB Wealth recently formalized its own institutional advisory and OCIO practice, pulling together work it had long done for nonprofits and corporate clients and adding two senior hires to run it.

In January, Prime Capital Financial named Scott Duba president and promoted Will McGough to chief investment officer as part of a leadership reshuffle tied to its national growth push, alongside the addition of ERISA specialist Fred Reish and the acquisition of Bradshaw Rogers Financial Partners.

More recently, Carlyle became a backer for the firm last month, agreeing to provide roughly $600 million in hybrid capital via its Global Credit platform in exchange for a minority stake in Prime Capital. That deal that valued the firm at more than $1.8 billion and marked the exit of prior backer Abry Partners.