More than 20 charities with portfolios larger than £10m have invested in Sarasin’s two Alpha Common Investment Funds since they launched five years ago.

Sarasin & Partners claims the Alpha CIF for Endowments has outperformed all other multi-asset class CIFs over the five years since 31 December 2005, and together with the Alpha CIF for Income & Reserves, account for more than £800m of charity investments.

The two funds were intended to appeal not only to smaller charities, who are commonly attracted to pooled funds, but also to larger charities that recognised the efficiencies of a pooled vehicle but did not rate the reporting associated with them.

Sarasin’s head of charities Richard Maitland said: “By increasing levels of transparency and providing regular reports of a type and quality more usually associated with large segregated mandates, we have found that trustees have been willing to invest substantially larger sums on behalf of their charities.

“We now have over 20 charities with portfolios larger than £10m invested in the two Alpha funds and several charities with more than £25m.”

Alpha CIF for Endowments topped £770m at 31 December 2010 and in the five years since its launch it produced a total return, gross income reinvested of 34.1 per cent.

Altogether charities comprise 27 per cent of the £12.5bn Sarasin & Partners had under management at the end of 2010.