Endowments 2010: Risk Management, Liquidity, Stewardship

The title says it all: Endowments 2010: Risk Management, Liquidity, Stewardship. Opening year-end statements this year isn't quite as scary as it was last year, but endowment managers still face the need to recover from this recession. And they're going to do it without a return to the former "normal."

Commonfund and NACUBO are now also tracking endowment performance. Preliminary data for the fiscal year ending June 2009, with 504 institutions out of a base of 800 having responded to a survey, shows that the results in aggregate are not as dire as they were for some marquee institutions. The average endowment was down 19 percent for the year ending in June; Harvard reported losses of 27.3 percent that year, while Yale lost 24.6 percent. Most institutions surveyed lost 22.5 percent from July 1, 2008 to November 30, 2008, which means that most participated in the market’s nascent recovery. Spending rates remained constant at an average of 4.3 percent of assets. The full study will be released on January 27.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA