After years of fundraising and savvy investing, NC State is on the brink of reaching a $1 billion endowment.
Brian Sischo, vice chancellor of university advancement, said the reason for this tremendous growth in university funding has been a combination of new gifts to the endowment and a shrewd investment strategy.
The university’s endowment, or investment portfolio, earns money for the university over time. It is traditionally used to run day-to-day operations at the university as well as to provide funding for various student and faculty opportunities.
The growth of the endowment can also mean availability for more things that students need, such as scholarships and financial aid.
“The larger the endowment, the more funds that are available for to support things that students care about, a large part of it going towards supporting scholarships and financial aid for current and future students,” Sischo said.
When Randy Woodson came to NC State in 2010, NC State’s endowment was at roughly $430 million. At the end of the last fiscal year, the endowment’s value had grown to about $885 million.
“In effect, the endowment has doubled since the Chancellor’s arrival,” Sischo said.
Alumni gifts have been a critical factor in NC State’s endowment growth over the past few years, which have contributed approximately $185 million to the university in the past four years alone, Sischo said.
“We have roughly 200,000 alumni out there who care very much about the wellbeing of the university,” Sischo said.
Sischo said Woodson devotes a significant amount of his time to being involved with external constituencies and being active with alumni, donors and various corporations.
“What I and the chancellor will do is work very closely with individuals as well as corporations and foundations that have the capacity to support the university at a transformative level but also have an interest in doing so,” Sischo said.
Much of the university’s fundraising time is spent traveling to various locations to meet with different potential donors in addition to hosting engagement events in Talley Student Union and in the Chancellor’s Residence, according to Sischo.
“It’s a combination of those things that leads to the engagement of people in the life of the university,” Sischo said.
Sischo said the process by which endowments are grown is complicated and it requires a combination of savvy investing as well as procuring gifts from donors and alumni.
“How it works is over time some donors will earmark their giving to the endowment, and those funds are set aside and invested by the university for investment return so that over time the endowment fund will grow,” Sischo said.
The UNC Board of Trustees established a minimal 4 percent spending rate for university endowments. The idea is to net more than that amount, which will then be put toward growing the endowment.
In the last fiscal year, the university’s investment return on all of its endowments combined was 15.7 percent. Due to the spending cap, 4 percent of that was used toward the annual operating budget, and the remaining 11.7 percent was returned to the endowment.
Siddharth Vadakkeveedu, a senior studying biomedical engineering said with a larger endowment, there could be more opportunities for students to pursue their interests.
“I feel that if we have a larger endowment, there will be a larger amount of money that students will be able to use to pursue interests such as clubs, organizations and even funding their own projects,” Vadakkeveedu said.
