What is an endowment?
An endowment is a fund that lives on in perpetuity as only a percentage of the earnings are spent; protecting the corpus, ensuring the original investment will not be lost. Carroll’s pooled endowment is a collection of named endowed funds that fulfill the mission of the college and support a variety of learning and enrichment opportunities for students, faculty and staff. With the expansion of endowment support, more of our learning community can be served through scholarships, academics, student life, mission-centric programming, faculty enrichment, and other college operations.
How does Carroll’s endowment help fulfill the mission?
First and foremost, providing students with an education that transforms them into men and women in service to others is a critical imperative at Carroll. In the same way, the endowment is a funding vehicle that supports our capacity to fulfill our mission forever. A strong endowment reduces reliance on tuition revenue and the burden this places on parents and students, while also delivering programmatic funding, professorships and a number of other resources, far into the future - with no end date.
What is Carroll’s investment philosophy?
Carroll's investment philosophy is to maximize return on assets by exercising an appropriate level of risk; providing income for the benefit of our learning community and honoring a donor's intent for the gift and growth of their investment into perpetuity.
Will my endowment gift ever deplete?
Each named endowment produces earnings year after year which are spent according to the donor's wishes, such as for scholarships, faculty support, or to build the library collection. Annually, amounts are withdrawn from the pooled endowment to fund the specified purpose. Endowment spending is typically five percent, and is sourced from net realized and unrealized investment gains. The original value of any gift (the corpus) to Carroll's endowment will never be spent. Should the estimated annual calculated spending exceed the net realized and unrealized investment gains, the spending is suspended until the value of the corpus is returned.
What types of gifts does Carroll accept?
Carroll College gratefully accepts cash donations, publicly traded securities, closely held securities (if convertible to cash), real estate and tangible personal property (if convertible to cash).
If an endowment is to be established solely through a planned giving vehicle or will, assistance from the Office of Institutional advancement is available to insure the appropriate documents reflect the donor’s intent in naming and terms, as well as use of the funds.
If an endowment is to be funded over time, the suggested timeframe is no more than five years.
Carroll College exists as a private 501(c)(3) charitable organization. All contributions are tax deductible as allowed by law.