Abstract
The study aims to identify and systematise the regulatory, financial, economic, organisational, and managerial constraints in Kazakhstan's endowment funds' transition to ESG investment, and to substantiate mechanisms for overcoming them. The methodological basis includes documentary and comparative legal analysis, an institutional approach, a comparative study of public examples, and scenario financial modelling. The regulatory framework has been analysed as of October 1, 2026. The analysis found that creating special legislation on endowment capital and developing national infrastructure for sustainable financing create institutional prerequisites for ESG investment but do not automatically ensure the implementation of relevant practices. The study identified limitations related to the permissibility of financial instruments, the certainty of the investment mandate, the quality of ESG information, professional competencies, and administrative costs. Scenario calculations for conditional funds with capital of 50, 100, and 500 million tenge showed that the financial availability of ESG procedures depends on asset scale. With a notional cost of 1.20 million tenge, the estimated coverage limits were 80 million tenge in the positive scenario and 240 million tenge in the negative scenario. Comparing institutional examples from Almaty, Astana, and the Karaganda region made it possible to identify differences in management tasks at certain stages of fund development. The scientific novelty lies in the development of an analytical model of the ESG transition, combining the legal admissibility of investments, financial capabilities, and organisational readiness. The practical significance of the results depends on their potential use in developing investment declarations, regulating interactions with management companies, and forming a control system. The limitations of the study are due to the lack of a comparable database of financial and portfolio indicators of endowment funds in Kazakhstan.