The Importance of Endowment Gifts

In fiscal year 2024, approximately 15 percent of Bates’ total operating budget was from the draw from the endowment, supporting aid to students, faculty and research, and programs across the campus. While the college’s endowment is important and substantial, many of our closest peers have endowments that provide 40 percent or more of total operating budget.

Accordingly, we must strive to grow our endowment to support a larger proportion of Bates’ noble work, in perpetuity. As we know too well, Bates’ reputation far exceeds its endowment, which continues to limit what we can provide per student in annual support. For decades, Bates’ endowment has been considerably smaller than our peers, making growing the endowment a key priority for our future.

The endowment grows through giving and investment performance. Of the $300 million raised over the course of Bates’ last comprehensive campaign, $100 million came through endowed gifts and pledges. Gifts to the endowment may be made as current gifts, estate gifts, or other planned gifts. More information on options for giving can be found here.

Types of Endowment Gifts

Endowment gifts fall into two broad categories:

Unrestricted endowed funds give Bates the flexibility to address emerging and ongoing priorities, ensuring the college can respond dynamically to opportunities and challenges.
Restricted endowed funds are intended to support a specific purpose. The college must use these funds as designated by the donor. Many donors choose to support financial aid through scholarships, endowed professorships, specific athletic teams or research funds for faculty.

If you are interested in starting a conversation about options for endowment giving, please contact Vice President for College Advancement Eric Foushée P’22, P’26 at efoushee@bates.edu. 

Roles and Responsibilities

The endowment is overseen by the Committee on Investment of the Board of Trustees and Bates’ finance and accounting staff.

Bates: Oversight

The Investment Committee establishes and approves investment policies, objectives, and strategies for all endowment and investment portfolio assets. It also regularly reviews the implementation of these policies and monitors the achievement of its objectives.

The finance and accounting team oversees the day-to-day management of the endowment. The team is Geoffrey Swift, vice president for finance and administration; Natalie Williamson, assistant vice president and controller; and Mike Mishler, senior accountant.

Investure: Portfolio Management

Starting in 2025, Bates is partnered with Investure, a private investment-management company, to manage the college’s investment portfolio. With a combined portfolio of some $18 billion, Investure provides a deep team of professionals and access to investment opportunities comparable to those of larger endowments.

Investure, working on behalf of a select group of foundation, college, and university endowments, helps develop guidelines and objectives, allocates assets, selects managers, monitors performance, and administers pooled-investment vehicles that are available only to clients.

Under this arrangement, the Bates Investment Committee and Board remain the fiduciary and are actively involved in making decisions regarding guidelines, asset allocation, and strategic changes in the portfolio as well as continually monitoring the balance between performance and risk. The Bates staff manages the day-to-day relationship with Investure.

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