Why evergreen funds never really close.

A closed-end fund is built around a single close. An evergreen fund is built around a valuation that never stops.

Capital comes in against a number that keeps moving

A closed-end fund prices capital once, at the close, and that price is fixed for the life of the fund. An evergreen fund reopens the price every month or quarter: investors subscribe at the current NAV, and a new subscriber buys into the entire existing portfolio at whatever that portfolio is worth today, not at some fixed entry price set at inception.

Capital goes out against the same number

Redemptions run on the identical logic in reverse — an investor exits at the current NAV, not at a price fixed years earlier. Because that NAV is real money leaving on a quarterly clock, the fund can't fund it by selling illiquid holdings on demand. It has to keep a liquidity sleeve — cash, an undrawn credit facility, shorter-duration holdings — sized against the valuation, not against the portfolio's actual liquidity. The liquidity sleeve isn't optional. It's what continuous valuation requires to meet redemptions.

The portfolio is built to support continuous valuation

An evergreen fund has to generate liquidity continuously, not all at once. A single vintage can't do that on its own — its exits cluster around whenever those specific companies happen to sell. Holding several vintages at once smooths that out: while one is still mid-hold, another is maturing into cash, keeping the sleeve funded and the NAV supported by realized cash flows, not just valuation marks. Multi-vintage construction isn't diversification for its own sake. It's what makes a valuation that runs forever survivable.

A closed-end fund eventually comes to an end. An evergreen fund just reaches its next valuation date.