February 10, 2005
It’s a match: UW nets more than $73 million in new endowed funds
In a typical year, development officers at the University might be able to facilitate the creation of five endowed chairs and nine endowed professorships campuswide. In the past year, the total is nine chairs and 58 professorships, not to mention 33 scholarships for undergraduates and 55 fellowships for graduate students.
The bonanza is the result of the Matching Gift Initiative, launched a year ago, a program that allowed donors to contribute money and have it matched on a one-to-two basis. In other words, if a donor contributed $100,000 for a scholarship or fellowship, then the University would add $50,000. A gift of $250,000 for a professorship would be matched with $125,000, and $1,000,000 for a chair would be matched with $500,000.
In all, the University has garnered more than $73 million in new endowed funds thanks to the initiative. “This program has had a profound effect on the UW in the last year,” said Greg Sheridan, associate vice president for constituency programs in Development & Alumni Relations. “What we’ve been able to do is leverage funds for the human capital of the University.”
The initiative began with the generosity of donors who were recruited to create a fund of $20 million. The University used a portion of its royalty fees for another $20 million, to make a $40 million pool for the matching funds. Development officers were then able to offer donors the opportunity of having their gifts matched, and many were receptive to the idea.
“Donors love leverage of dollars,” Sheridan said. “If I can make a gift of $250,000 for a professorship and know that it’s going to get a $125,000 match to bring it to $375,000 that pays out annually at about 5 percent, that’s a huge impact.”
Donors could stipulate where the money was to be used, which led many to give to fields they care deeply about, Sheridan said. The only restriction was that scholarships had to be for four years. “The regents didn’t want the concentration of the awards at the junior and senior level,” he said. “They wanted to make sure we were bringing in the best and brightest to the campus.”
When the program began, Sheridan said, some people wanted to apportion the funds to make sure that all the money didn’t go to areas that already have substantial endowments. But as it turned out, that wasn’t necessary. The College of Arts and Sciences — not traditionally rich in endowments — received 42 matching gifts, more than any other unit. That included 21 professorships and two chairs, an area the college had already been concentrating on.
“When David Hodge came on board as dean six years ago, there were 18 professorships and chairs for all the faculty in the college, at that time about 900,” said Michael Podlin, assistant dean for development and external relations for A&S. “He and our College Advisory Board challenged us to create 100 professorships.”
A&S had already managed to add 43 professorships before the matching program began; today it has 85 professorships and chairs combined.
What are endowed professorships and chairs and why are they so important? Both provide unrestricted funds for a faculty member to use for such purposes as research, professional travel and hiring research assistants. And because they are endowments, the principal is not spent and the payout continues indefinitely.
“It offers a lot of prestige for a faculty member to hold an endowed professorship or chair; it recognizes and rewards their outstanding work,” Podlin said. “It’s also one of our best recruitment and retention tools. It helps us keep good people when other schools are competing for them.”
“Departmental travel funds, publication funds, all of these things have disappeared through the budget cuts, so departments have no flexibility,” Sheridan added. “The initiative infused dollars into some of those areas and it’s allowing some of our best to continue to showcase the great scholarly work of the University in numerous fields.”
Some of the new professorships are in fields or departments that have never had them before. The Information School, for example, is creating the nation’s first endowed professorship in children’s librarianship. Called the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professorship in Children and Youth Services, it is named after the famous children’s book author and UW alumna. The professorship was made possible by donations from alumni, the library community and fans of Cleary’s work.
And the School of Social Work went from zero to three professorships as a result of the initiative. One of those professorships was endowed by Brian and Christy Cressey, longtime donors who also funded professorships in their own fields — economics and communication.
The Department of Mathematics got its first professorship (a second has since been added) thanks to A&S donors Maggie and Doug Walker, who also funded a professorship in history and a third “at large” professorship at the A&S dean’s discretion. The Walkers’ gift also made possible one graduate fellowship and a curatorship at the Henry Gallery.
Most of the donors who have given to the matching program are individuals, Sheridan said, but there have been gifts from corporations and foundations too. The Kazickas Family Foundation, for example, will give $250,000 to Scandinavian Studies for a professorship with an emphasis on the study of Lithuania (Scandinavian Studies has a Baltic Program covering the three Baltic republics, including Lithuania).
“The foundation is based in New York,” Podlin said, “but the family’s ancestry is Lithuanian and they heard about our Baltic program through our volunteers.”
Impressive as the totals are, the Matching Gift Initiative isn’t over yet. There are still funds available, and development officers will continue working to see if more matches can be made. In the meantime, Sheridan wants to emphasize that the program would not have been possible if not for the initial donors who contributed the money to help create the matching fund.
“Their names aren’t on any of these endowments, but they stepped up to be founders,” he said. “They believed so strongly in the importance of this to the UW that they said we’ll give our dollars to leverage others and help the University get better. They’re the unsung heroes.”
Here is a list of donors who have made pledges of $500,000 or more to the matching fund, which was the criterion to qualify as a Founder:
- Washington Research Foundation,
- David Bonderman,
- Bill and Mimi Gates,
- Bill and Sally Neukom,
- Bruce and Jeannie Nordstrom,
- Starbucks Corporation,
- Conrad and Charlotte Tobin Estates,
- Lucille Schimel Estate.
