Second in a series breaking down real prompts our members run on Ora, and why the wording matters as much as the data underneath it.
Every diverse-owned manager raising Fund II gets the same advice: go talk to the emerging manager programs. It is good advice and it is nearly useless as stated, because “the emerging manager programs” is not a list. It is a few hundred institutions with wildly different definitions of what qualifies, wildly different levels of disclosure, and a meaningful number of programs that exist on paper and have not written a check in three years.
The prompt below turns that vague advice into a target list you can actually work.
The prompt
I run a diverse-owned lower middle-market buyout firm raising Fund II. Identify U.S. public pensions, endowments, and foundations with an active emerging manager or diverse manager program, showing program AUM carve-out, check size range, program contact, and any recent diverse manager commitments. Prioritize plans with a formal MWBE or emerging manager policy.
Here is what each piece of it is doing, and where the leverage is.
The single most important word is “active”
There is a large gap between institutions that have an emerging manager policy and institutions that are currently deploying against one. Policies persist long after the carve-out has been fully committed, the program staff has moved on, or the board has quietly deprioritized it. A list built on policy language alone will send you to plenty of doors that are closed.
Asking for recent diverse manager commitments in the same breath is what separates the two. Commitment activity is the proof of life. If a plan has closed on three diverse-owned private equity managers in the last eighteen months, the program is funded, staffed, and buying. If the last commitment was in 2021, you are looking at a policy, not a program.
This matters more now than it did a few years ago. The political environment around diversity-linked investing has shifted, and some programs have been restructured, renamed, or refocused around vintage-and-AUM criteria rather than ownership criteria. Screening on observed commitments rather than stated policy keeps you current with what actually changed versus what only changed on the website.
Anatomy: what each constraint is doing
“Diverse-owned lower middle-market buyout firm raising Fund II.” This front-loaded context is not throat-clearing. It sets three eligibility filters at once, and every one of them will disqualify you somewhere:
- Fund number. Many programs cap eligibility at Fund I through Fund III. Some stop at Fund II. A few will only look at first-time funds. Knowing where you sit in that band determines half the list.
- AUM and fund size. Most emerging manager definitions are built on firm AUM thresholds, fund size, and length of track record, and the thresholds vary by asset class within the same institution. A firm that qualifies as emerging for private equity at one plan will not at another.
- Ownership. Which brings us to the distinction most people collapse.
“Emerging manager OR diverse manager program.” These are not the same thing and the prompt deliberately asks for both. Emerging manager programs are typically defined by vintage, track record, and AUM, with no ownership requirement at all. Diverse or MWBE programs are defined by ownership. A diverse-owned Fund II manager can be eligible for both, one, or neither depending on the institution’s thresholds.
Getting both categories in one list is the point. If you only chase MWBE programs, you miss the larger pool of ownership-neutral emerging manager capital you also qualify for. If you only chase emerging manager programs, you leave the ownership-specific carve-outs on the table.
“U.S. public pensions, endowments, and foundations.” Three entity types with three completely different disclosure regimes, which is exactly why you want an engine assembling this rather than a database query.
Public pensions are the easy tier: board materials, annual program reports, and statutory reporting requirements in several states mean the carve-out size, the definitions, and often the manager roster are all public. Some plans report annually on diversity in investment management under state statute, and several run standing annual emerging manager conferences that publish the participant lists.
Endowments and foundations are the hard tier. Formal, named emerging manager programs are rarer. The equivalent commitment often lives inside a mission-aligned or impact allocation, in a diversity commitment announced by the CIO’s office, or in 990 filings and annual reports rather than in a policy document. A list that only covers pensions is missing real capital that is harder to find and therefore less competed.
“Program AUM carve-out.” Tells you whether the program can write your check at all. A $200M carve-out across all asset classes is a different conversation than a $2B private equity sleeve.
“Check size range.” The most operationally useful field on the list. Lower middle-market Fund IIs frequently die on a concentration limit rather than on the merits: a plan wants to write $50M minimum and cannot be more than 10% of your fund. If you are raising $150M, that plan is arithmetically out no matter how much they like you. Sorting the list by check size against your target fund size eliminates a quarter of the names before you spend a call on them.
“Program contact.” Emerging manager programs usually have a dedicated owner, and that person is rarely the CIO. Titles vary — Director of Emerging Manager Programs, Head of Diverse Manager Strategy, or a private equity portfolio manager who carries the program as part of a broader mandate. Getting the right seat matters more here than in almost any other channel, because the program owner is the one who can tell you in ten minutes whether you qualify.
“Prioritize plans with a formal MWBE or emerging manager policy.” Formal policy means board-approved language, usually with a reporting obligation attached and in some states a statutory basis. That combination produces two things you want: a defined process you can enter, and public documentation of the criteria so you can self-assess before you pitch.
The thing this prompt will teach you that nobody says out loud
A large share of emerging manager capital is not allocated directly. It is allocated through manager-of-managers and fund-of-funds intermediaries who run the program on the institution’s behalf.
That changes your outreach entirely. For those plans, the plan is not your buyer. The intermediary is. Writing a beautiful letter to the plan’s CIO about your Fund II is the wrong motion when the actual decision sits with a program manager who has been given a mandate to build a portfolio of exactly the firms that look like yours.
When you work the output of this prompt, sort every name into one of three buckets:
- Direct programs where plan staff underwrite managers themselves.
- Intermediated programs where a manager-of-managers holds the pen, in which case your target list should be the intermediaries, not the plans.
- Hybrid programs that do both, usually with the intermediary handling smaller and earlier commitments and staff taking over at graduation size.
What you do with the list
- Self-qualify before you outreach. For each name, check your firm AUM, fund size, and fund number against the published definition. Getting rejected on a threshold you could have read in advance costs you the relationship for the next fund too.
- Map the graduation path. The best emerging manager programs are designed to move you into the main portfolio over time. Ask about it early. It tells the program owner you are thinking about Fund III and IV, not just closing this one.
- Work the calendar. Several of the largest programs run annual conferences and there is now a coordinated week of them in February across major state and city plans. Those events compress a quarter of introductions into three days.
- Track policy changes, not just commitments. A plan that just approved an expansion of its program into private markets is a materially better prospect than one running a mature, fully committed carve-out.
Variants worth running
- Swap Fund II for first-time fund and add “will consider seed or anchor investments” to surface the much smaller pool of institutions that anchor rather than follow.
- Swap public pensions for insurance companies and corporate plans with supplier diversity or emerging manager commitments, a channel most diverse-owned firms never work.
- Keep everything and add “and identify the consultant of record for private equity” to build the gatekeeper list alongside the LP list, since consultant approval is often the real gate.
- Swap buyout for private credit, real assets, or venture to rebuild the same map for a different strategy, since carve-outs and definitions differ by asset class inside the same institution.
- Add “flag any program that has changed its policy language or program name in the last 18 months” to catch restructurings before you pitch to a program that no longer exists in the form you are expecting.
Why this is a prompt and not a database query
No investor database has a field for “has a formal MWBE policy, an active carve-out, and has committed to a diverse-owned buyout manager in the last two years.” That answer is spread across board minutes, statutory annual reports, conference rosters, press releases, 990s, and consultant announcements. Assembling it by hand is a multi-week analyst project, which is why most firms do it once at the start of a raise and then work a stale list for eighteen months.
Ora reasons across those sources and returns the synthesis with its reasoning visible, so you can verify a carve-out figure or a program definition against the source before you build a quarter’s outreach plan on it.
One practical note: program definitions and eligibility thresholds are set by each institution and change with board approvals. Confirm the current criteria and the current program owner from the institution’s own materials before you pitch, and check any commitment figures against the plan’s latest reporting. The list gets you to the right doors. Qualifying yourself at each one is still your job.
This is the second post in Prompt Anatomy, where we take a real prompt run on Ora and break down why it is written the way it is. Have one you want dissected? Send it to support@octum.ai.
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