Diane Dietz has the good news here:
The University of Oregon Foundation proved itself among the best in the country for shepherding university endowment cash in 2016 — and far better than Harvard or Princeton.
The overall UO endowment grew 5.5 percent last year compared with an average loss of 2.2 percent for peer endowments, according to the annual survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the money manager Commonfund.
About 2.4 percent of the UO’s gains came from investment returns, placing the UO in the top 5 percent of its peers. The rest of the growth came from donations. …
Not bad, considering that the S&P returned about 1.4% for the FY, with dividends reinvested. But we’ll have to wait for the Foundation to get around to releasing its tax return to see their expenses. Their IRS 990 was due Nov 15, but they typically ask for the maximum allowed extension – 6 months.
And the Foundation is not required to release much information about where their money goes. They dropped the athletic breakout from their audited financial statements years ago, and threatened to sue me for defamation when I pointed that out publicly, and released the data I could find:
UO Foundation’s endowment MV up 9.2% for FY ending in June 2017. The average and median change in MV for public institutions is 12.2% and 12.5% respectively.
Given the Knight Gift ($50 million) and other gifts in the past year or two, plus the booming stock market doesn’t this look bad?
http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/research/2017-Endowment-Market-Values-2.pdf
http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/research/2017-NCSE-Public-Tables–One-Three-Five-and-10-Year-Returns-by-Size-and-Type.pdf