Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A US university applies a 4.5 percent smoothed payout from its endowment to fund a named chair in physics.
- Is an instance
An Oxford college distributes endowment income to support student scholarships and post-doctoral fellowships.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Annual giving (current-year donations) is not endowment income.
- Not an instance
Government block-grant funding to a university is not endowment income.
Editorial commentary
Endowment income is a major source of restricted and unrestricted funding for large research universities (Harvard, Yale, Oxford colleges, Stanford) and for foundation grant-making programmes. Spending is governed by donor restrictions, fiduciary duties, and board-set spending rules (typically a smoothed percentage of the trailing multi-year endowment value). Endowment income is a critical input to discretionary funding, named chairs, named research centres, and bridge funding pools.
References
- NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments; Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA).
Also known as
Endowment payout · Endowment distribution · Investment income (endowment)
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Endowment income"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/endowment-income" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"name": "Endowment income",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/endowment-income",
"description": "The investment returns generated by an institution's or foundation's permanent endowment fund, used (typically at a defined spending rate, e.g., 4 to 5 percent of a multi-year smoothed average) to support operations, scholarships, or named research programmes.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/funding-lifecycle-and-financial-vocabulary/",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/endowment-income",
"sameAs": [
"Endowment payout",
"Endowment distribution",
"Investment income (endowment)"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
