SHE and WOMN have both similarities and significant differences. SHE recently had assets under management of $252 million and an expense ratio of 20 basis points. It is a large-cap, market-weighted fund. For the sector breakdown, SHE has health care in the top spot at 19%, financials at 15% and consumer cyclicals at 14%. Johnson & Johnson is the top holding, at 9%, with both Home Depot and Mastercard at 5%.

WOMN tracks the Morningstar Women’s Empowerment Index comprising large- and mid-cap U.S. equities. It had $4 million in assets and an expense ratio of 76 basis points.

Through mid-March, WOMN was up 12.7%. Impact Shares uses the Russell 1000 Index for its benchmark, and the fund that closely tracks that index—the iShares Russell 1000 ETF (IWB)—was up 12.9%. The ETF Research Center’s fund overlap tool shows that the WOMN portfolio has a 96% overlap with IWB and an 87% overlap with SPY. The overlap between SPY and SHE is 51%.

Seed Money Depleted

Assets under management in the SHE fund were north of $350 million as of August, but it has since lost about $100 million. Perhaps part of that can be attributed to equities hitting the skids in the fourth quarter. But a large part of it probably resulted from a large institutional investor that withdrew a huge chunk of its money from the fund.

According to Thompson, that institutional investor decided “to manage the money in-house according to [the SHE fund’s underlying] index, as opposed to investing in the fund itself.” Although Thompson declined to name the manager, it was likely CalSTRS. In a 13G filing, CalSTRS’ investment in SHE stood at $236 million as of January 11 according to filing tracker WhaleWisdom.

As reported in a story from Dow Jones Newswires, CalSTRS had begun the process of redeeming its $236 million investment in SHE when it withdrew $120 million in early February. A CalSTRS spokeswoman said in an e-mail that it doesn’t discuss individual transactions and wouldn’t confirm the figure in the Dow Jones Newswires story. The spokeswoman said the plan was to eventually bring the SHE seed money back in-house.

“CalSTRS’ investment in the index was under management by State Street, but had always been slated to transition back to CalSTRS as part of our broader initiative to manage 60% of our assets in-house,” the spokeswoman said. “We have a continuous need to explore and explore aggressively every possible strategy for improving our performance, and quite simply, diversity, it’s just good business.”

Regardless of the CalSTRS situation, Thompson says having a three-year track record will make it easier for fiduciaries to start recommending SHE. The fund started with institutional support, she notes, but now much of its support is coming at the individual level. In addition, the ETF is starting to be included in model portfolios.

Powell says WOMN has been slow to gather assets. But part of that might be because of its inauspicious launch just ahead of the fourth-quarter market correction, which made it tough to raise assets. Impact Shares’ model is unique because it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and it gives all its net profits after advisory fees to the YWCA.