The Fourth Professional Meeting of Endowment Funds of Kazakhstan Has Taken Place
On 17–18 November 2025, the Fourth Professional Meeting of Endowment Funds of Kazakhstan took place in Almaty. It was organized by Almaty Technological University and the Aurora-Ala Corporate Foundation, with the support of the National Center for the Development of Higher Education of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the National Endowment Association of Russia.
More than 100 representatives of 26 universities, endowment funds, and asset management companies from Kazakhstan and Russia took part in the event.
The two-day program focused on practical issues in managing and investing endowment funds, as well as on the exchange of experience between Kazakh and Russian universities following the entry into force of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan "On Target Capital Funds and Endowment Funds."
The meeting was moderated by Svetlana Lavrova, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Aurora-Ala Corporate Foundation, and Farkhad Kuanganov, Adviser to the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
"The growing response with each successive meeting reflects the rising interest in the endowment sector in Kazakhstan: for the first time, we received more than one hundred applications to participate, not only from funds but also from the financial market. It is also important to note the willingness of many universities to 'test the waters,' as well as the financiers' understanding of both the social and the business benefits," says Svetlana Lavrova.
As part of the cultural program, participants visited the Tanbaly Tas petroglyphs, where they became acquainted with a unique site on the UNESCO World Heritage List and also had the opportunity to interact in an informal setting.
At the conclusion of the event, on 18 November, participants took a guided tour of the recently opened Almaty Museum of Modern Art. The program included a closed professional session in which the museum team described in detail its plans for the museum's development, the formation of its endowment, and the specifics and mechanisms of fundraising.
Because endowments are of particular interest to the financial sector as unique clients, the general sponsors of the meeting were the investment companies Halyk Finance and Standard, which expressed deep interest in supporting and developing this field.