McPherson College in rural Kansas establishes $1,5000,000,000 Endowment

[lightning]

McPherson College Exceeds Double Match Challenge – Establishing A Future $1,500,000,000 Endowment – Largest in U.S. For A Small Liberal Arts College

https://www.mcpherson.edu/2023/07/mcpherson-college-establishes-1-billion-endowment/


I would love to see more success stories such as McPherson, or at the very least, McPherson is one reason to end the "I-give-up-because-everyone-else-gave-up" attitude that too often permeates the leadership circles that prefer to draft funeral plans for their college instead of lead them.

[Ruralguy]

Its not so straightforward. There are some colleges that do really well in fundraising, but are hurting for students for any number of reasons. They could stay open forever, in some sense, but would have to make a lot of cuts as enrollments drop. Then there are some colleges that are fine with students but can't get the big donations. Both at the same time is rare these days and both at the same time with *billions* in donations is likely singular, at least among the non-elites. I don't know as though most college presidents are giving up. Its just that its a tough environment, and they are doing what they can do. I think most that close (I'm not counting mergers and such) are really waiting until they can't afford utilities and payroll for a bare bones staff.
I'm not crying a river for most college presidents. Even small colleges pay them quite well. But the challenges aren't imagined and the excuses aren't fictional. Still, if your fundraising staff seem moribund, perhaps some changes need to be made.

[lightning]

Its not so straightforward. There are some colleges that do really well in fundraising, but are hurting for students for any number of reasons. They could stay open forever, in some sense, but would have to make a lot of cuts as enrollments drop. Then there are some colleges that are fine with students but can't get the big donations. Both at the same time is rare these days and both at the same time with *billions* in donations is likely singular, at least among the non-elites. I don't know as though most college presidents are giving up. Its just that its a tough environment, and they are doing what they can do. I think most that close (I'm not counting mergers and such) are really waiting until they can't afford utilities and payroll for a bare bones staff.
I'm not crying a river for most college presidents. Even small colleges pay them quite well. But the challenges aren't imagined and the excuses aren't fictional. Still, if your fundraising staff seem moribund, perhaps some changes need to be made.

All true. I'm still cautiously optimistic about McPherson, because I'm still not sure exactly how the $ will be used. If most of the donated $ ends up being used for new buildings that serve only to glorify their donors, then FVCK!!!!@#$!!

[Wahoo Redux]

If only we saw this more often.

[onthefringe]

McPherson College Exceeds Double Match Challenge – Establishing A Future $1,500,000,000 Endowment – Largest in U.S. For A Small Liberal Arts College

https://www.mcpherson.edu/2023/07/mcpherson-college-establishes-1-billion-endowment/


I would love to see more success stories such as McPherson, or at the very least, McPherson is one reason to end the "I-give-up-because-everyone-else-gave-up" attitude that too often permeates the leadership circles that prefer to draft funeral plans for their college instead of lead them.

Good lord — 810 students, 85% acceptance rate, 41%(!) graduation rate. Current endowment 44 million, so this is a change that is orders of magnitude. It will be very interesting to see what they do with this (especially since it looks like most of the funds are estate gifts, so it's not like they are going to see 1.5 billion any time real soon).

Looking at their wikipedia page, I assume the anonymous donor is "notable alum" Harry Stine "billionaire businessman and the founder and owner of Stine Seed." I do wonder where they got the other 500,000,000.

[Ruralguy]

Buildings can be great, so long as they serve a useful function. We got a new STEM building a bit ago, and a new library that still looks new over 10 years ago, and some other new stuff, and its all much better than we we have.

With such a low present endowment and low enrollment and high attrition, I think they need to probably put a fair bit into academic scholarships for students to increase the high performance of the student body, and probably it will reduce at least academic attrition. Some money for faculty retention would also be needed since faculty are likely to leave a place that has high student attrition (so, partially or fully endowed professorships with competitive salaries, start up funds, internal grants).

But almost certainly some new facilities would be needed for a place like that which almost certainly has buildings that are 50+ years old and lots of deferred maintenance and facilities that are far from what is suggested for best practices in many fields.

[lightning]

Buildings can be great, so long as they serve a useful function. We got a new STEM building a bit ago, and a new library that still looks new over 10 years ago, and some other new stuff, and its all much better than we we have.

With such a low present endowment and low enrollment and high attrition, I think they need to probably put a fair bit into academic scholarships for students to increase the high performance of the student body, and probably it will reduce at least academic attrition. Some money for faculty retention would also be needed since faculty are likely to leave a place that has high student attrition (so, partially or fully endowed professorships with competitive salaries, start up funds, internal grants).

But almost certainly some new facilities would be needed for a place like that which almost certainly has buildings that are 50+ years old and lots of deferred maintenance and facilities that are far from what is suggested for best practices in many fields.

Of course buildings are necessary, but I've found that with a lot of these big donations of this type to this type of school, buildings are what end up getting most of the pie.

[Ruralguy]

A typical building at a small school will be in the 10's of millions range, but they are not the sort of thing that just go into endowment for the future. They are nearly all immediate projects, with maybe a short (a year) of exploratory phase to figure out needs and costs (and negotiate for a lead contractor). So, unless they are announcing that now, I doubt that they'll come out later and say that its for buildings. But, I highly doubt its fungible either. At some point, someone will have to say what all of this is for. probably most of it is already accounted for, and it would be nice to know publicly what that is.

[Hibush]

If they used $1B of the new fudns for financial aid, that would translate into about $50 million a year in tuition revenue that is fungible. They should be able to run in the black with over 1000 students.

[Ruralguy]

Right. If I could divide the pie myself I'd probably put at least 100,000,000 into buildings (including stadia and gyms--see below) and including maintenance funds, 100,000,000 into endowed professorships and endowed development funds for faculty, 100,000,000 for staff development related to the hopeful growth of the school, and all the rest for scholarships of varying amounts, including about as many full rides as you could manage. Probably admin and students will want some of the money going specifically to athletics, so we can say, maybe 100,000,000 for that or a little less, and take it out of all of the other things I mentioned.

[Ruralguy]

I see that the number was actually 1.5 billion for their endowment and not a mere 1 billion. So, make my numbers closer to 200,000,000 above. In any case, its a similar point to be made.