Richmond NIL
- Thread starter nathanw19
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The reason for this is because Size of Endowment is one of the major factors in which the "elite" private schools measure themselves. This was told to me directly by a recent and previous Athletic Director of UR who will remain nameless, but I will say is now currently an Athletic Director at another VA school.
The reason it came up was in passing one time - it was right when UR was near completion of funding for the football stadium and then also was raising money (I think over a $1 million dollars) for a new scoreboard in the Robins Center. I asked the AD - why not just pull some money out of the endowment, start construction today and when donations come in - put it back in the endowment. Reason for this was because the longer you wait - everything increases in price (this happened with the football stadium - it took UR about 2-3 years to raise the funds, and by the end of that time - the construction costs increased). So why not take a "loan" from the endowment - and pay it back, so you don't lose this time and money.
The answer was quite simple - as soon as you use endowment money, the size of the endowment decreases - and that effects our ranking with other schools. YES - a good portion of the endowment money is spoken for or used for interest to pay for things - but the school has the power to use it as needed. And use the Football stadium for example - as soon as you take $20 million out of the fund, you are now $20 million behind all your peers. It is just a game elite schools play with each other to see who can get the biggest endowment. Cause when it comes to endowment - size really matters.
That is not how it works. Endowments have an annual payout policy, which is based on what returns they expect to make after inflation. Typically it is 4% to 5.5%. All of the annual payout is part of the budget for organization. There is no extra money laying around. There are a lot of students not paying full tuition, which is a massive expense for the university.
8legs1dream
Graduate Assistant
There's a specific formula for calculating the annual payout, though they can choose to deviate from it as they did last year with COVID impacts.
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Spending Policy
The University’s spending policy was developed with the objectives of meeting the current operating needs of the University, providing year-to-year budget stability and protecting the future purchasing power of the endowment assets against the impact of inflation.
The University’s annual endowment spending distribution is determined each year based on the sum of a two-part, spending formula:
Market-value based component
This component is calculated by determining the average endowment market value at June 30 for the preceding five years, lagged by one year, and multiplying that calculated amount by five percent (5%). Thirty percent (30%) of this calculated amount is included in the determination of the annual spend from the endowment.
Spending component
This component is calculated by increasing or decreasing seventy percent (70%) of the prior year’s calculated endowment spending distribution by an inflation factor, using a five-year average of the Higher Education Price Index, as published by the Commonfund.
For fiscal year 2021, the University’s Board chose to maintain the fiscal year 2020 endowment spending rate and did not apply the spending formula.
The UR endowment is currently hovering around $3 billion dollars. Aside coming directly from the mouth of our Athletic Director, I find it hard to believe that - lets just say for example - the school wanted to add lights to the baseball field, or even non-sports related - wanted to build 2 more dorm buildings. If needed - your telling me - all $3 billion is spoken for? No way. $20 million from the $3 billion total is less than 1%.
I would assume, like you say - that most of the endowment is spoken for. But according to the UR website - about 66% receive financial aid - so I read that as 34% are paying full sticker price, which seems quite high to me. But I think in times of emergency - the endowment could be used.
But at the end of the day - my point was this, the endowment is simply a measuring stick for these elite schools. I mean Harvard has an endowment of 41 Billion!!! at that amount - you would think every student should go for free or tuition should be a lot less than 55-60K a year. But fact remains - these endowments are meaningful to Universities to rate among each other. Do they get used for students - of course. But could they be used more - no doubt.
Last year, the endowment provided about $124 million, or almost 39% of total operating revenue for the university. ~20 years ago, the endowment was providing around 25% of operating revenue.
Interestingly, Harvard's massive endowment provides an almost identical 39% of operating revenue. It's just that their total revenue is $5.2 billion (vs. $5.0 billion expenses) while ours is $320 million (vs. $300 million expenses).
Interestingly, Harvard's massive endowment provides an almost identical 39% of operating revenue. It's just that their total revenue is $5.2 billion (vs. $5.0 billion expenses) while ours is $320 million (vs. $300 million expenses).
Bingo - and I bet when the endowment goes up, so does the number of employees in the giving office.
Mo Money - Mo Problems.
No, U of R has a large endowment because we have a large alumni base that cares about the university and donates on an annual basis. Our endowment pays a large percent of the cost of running the university, which has allowed U of R to be considered one of the top 100 Universities/colleagues in the country.
You make it sound like the university is corrupt and people should not give, because the university has too much money. That is not the case, alumni need to continue to support the university if we want it to continue being one of the top in the future.
I am not saying UR is corrupt. There are many many schools with larger endowments than UR. 28 schools to be exact. All I am saying is that while endowments are necessary - the reason it continues to grow and grow and it needs to grow is because tuition increases in college have been ridiculous across the board.
Total cost to attend UR is nearly 77K when everything is factored in. And as stated by the UR website - there are 34% of students who pay full price. That means 34% of the students walking around campus are paying 77K to attend the school. I am sorry - I attended UR, it was a great experience and great school - but not 77K good. I can't really justify that for any school. Meanwhile - we have this 3 billion dollar endowment. What if we took out 1 billion dollars and decided to use that money AND continue to get donations at a high rate to cut that tuition down significantly. Approximately 310 million would probably cover tuition, room, board, fees for ALL students for 1 year at the 77K rate. Just seems silly to me to have this large egg of money sitting there and say - we just operate off the interest/earnings.
And we are not alone in this. Like I said - endowments are a measuring stick for elite schools. That is why top 5 endowments belong to schools called Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT.
Total cost to attend UR is nearly 77K when everything is factored in. And as stated by the UR website - there are 34% of students who pay full price. That means 34% of the students walking around campus are paying 77K to attend the school. I am sorry - I attended UR, it was a great experience and great school - but not 77K good. I can't really justify that for any school. Meanwhile - we have this 3 billion dollar endowment. What if we took out 1 billion dollars and decided to use that money AND continue to get donations at a high rate to cut that tuition down significantly. Approximately 310 million would probably cover tuition, room, board, fees for ALL students for 1 year at the 77K rate. Just seems silly to me to have this large egg of money sitting there and say - we just operate off the interest/earnings.
And we are not alone in this. Like I said - endowments are a measuring stick for elite schools. That is why top 5 endowments belong to schools called Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT.
I agree with u we definitely do need continued alumni support. This may not have been explicitly stated by u but I'll just add I don't believe we rank especially well with alumni giving - percentage wise. That needs to be better. Those that do might give in larger amounts, which one could say is the better option anyway.
In FY 2018 we had a 19% alumni giving rate. from what I understand that's average or slightly over average for private schools. But we r not doing as well as we'd like here. It can be variable year to year but I think generally it is trending down tho that would be the case on a macro level too. SF may have more data, schools hold that tightly to the vest as much as anything.
There are 2 different ways most people give to the university: 1. The annual fund (includes donations to the athletic department) this money is spent over the course of the year. Most people give this way. 2. The endowment fund which is supposed to support the university in perpetuity. If the endowment fund paid out the amounts you mention, it wouldn't be around very long and more importantly people would stop donating to it.
I do not like the tuition structure of the University. It cost a lot less than 77K to educate a child at U of R. The 34% paying full tuition are subsidizing other students. If you make a lot of money the extra cost is not a big deal, but for many people with incomes between about 150K and 400K it is a huge deal and many in this income level send their kids elsewhere. Bottom line if you poor or middle class U of R is great deal and if you are wealthily its a great school, but those in the upper middle class or lower upper class have difficulty sending their kids to U of R, which is a lot of alumni.
I have several friends I graduated with and their kids went to JMU , or somewhere else..
In reading about the schools competing to have the largest endowments reminds me of the corruption
that took place on Wall Street years ago. The corrupt leaders of firms were already incredibly wealthy, but they
were competing with each other to see who could be the wealthiest.
This is Cooper’s legacy. I guess it elevated us to elitist status, in the eyes of some, but I agree with you that it left little room for the middle class.
A donor-run NIL collective is coming to USC football — against the school’s wishes
USC football vs. its own donors and fans? A fight develops for control of endorsements
USC athletic department leaders have opposed the creation of 'Student Body Right,' an NIL group created by deep-pocketed donors and diehard fans.
www.latimes.com
Inevitably, the fat cat donors for football and basketball end up causing illegalities within the programsA donor-run NIL collective is coming to USC football — against the school’s wishes
USC football vs. its own donors and fans? A fight develops for control of endorsements
USC athletic department leaders have opposed the creation of 'Student Body Right,' an NIL group created by deep-pocketed donors and diehard fans.
But that brings us to another question, are programs actually going to be punished, fined, or forced to
have forfeitures in the near future? The NCAA has become impotent.
If you look at the numbers, this isn't actually true unless you mean that it *could* cost less....all those fancy buildings, small class sizes, and D-Hall spreads are expensive. A $300 million budget divided by 3,900 undergrad and grad students equals...drumroll...$77,000 per head.
But the question is - should it be 300 million budget. That budget likely includes - salaries for 50 giving staff members and likely some bloated staff elsewhere all around the school. And this is not a UR problem - this higher education, especially private colleges all over the country. It has also been aided by the fact the government hands out the majority of loans to college students - so makes sense the colleges around the country would raise the price as much as possible.
If you run a business and sell a widget, but your customers can afford it - and the government steps in and says no problem - we will give the people a loan to buy your widget. Are you going to set the price for that widget at $10, $100, or $10,000 - knowing it doesn't matter what price you set, the government will cover it and you will get your money right away.
I know UR hands out need based money, but as mentioned above - we need people to pay full price to subsidize the other half of the student population. This is why I always say (and have heard from the inside) that "need blind" sounds good on paper, but its not 100% true. Yes - they will cover a students need. But UR - like any other school - needs to hit a "quota" of full paying students each year. It can vary from year to year, based on economic conditions, endowment performance, donations - but the fact remains - they still need a good portion of students paying 77K to allow for "need blind" access to the rest. Two students - same application, same grades, same background. One can pay full price, no problem. One will need 35K in support - who do you think gets in? At that point - its a business decision.
If you run a business and sell a widget, but your customers can afford it - and the government steps in and says no problem - we will give the people a loan to buy your widget. Are you going to set the price for that widget at $10, $100, or $10,000 - knowing it doesn't matter what price you set, the government will cover it and you will get your money right away.
I know UR hands out need based money, but as mentioned above - we need people to pay full price to subsidize the other half of the student population. This is why I always say (and have heard from the inside) that "need blind" sounds good on paper, but its not 100% true. Yes - they will cover a students need. But UR - like any other school - needs to hit a "quota" of full paying students each year. It can vary from year to year, based on economic conditions, endowment performance, donations - but the fact remains - they still need a good portion of students paying 77K to allow for "need blind" access to the rest. Two students - same application, same grades, same background. One can pay full price, no problem. One will need 35K in support - who do you think gets in? At that point - its a business decision.
I like the collective idea. Wonder if we could get enough people to pull one together, but likely need some big donor headlining it. But issue I could see with it is fairness - like men's hoops get collective but not womens lacrosse.A donor-run NIL collective is coming to USC football — against the school’s wishes
USC football vs. its own donors and fans? A fight develops for control of endorsements
USC athletic department leaders have opposed the creation of 'Student Body Right,' an NIL group created by deep-pocketed donors and diehard fans.
I would only donate if it were going to sports I care about for the spiders (really only M Bball)
UR prides itself on being both need blind and committed to meet 100% of need, and they're one of a very small number of schools to do that. My understanding from what I've also heard from the inside is that this is indeed true. The admissions reviewers in fact do not see financial information.
The important bit is that this policy only applies to U.S. students. UR is need-aware for international students (which make up ~10% of the student population), and that's where they can massage things to help the money work out if needed.
When you're dealing with thousands of applicants and admits, you can be fairly confident in what you're going to get overall financial need-wise. You're not suddenly going to get 100% of the class needing aid. When you're dealing with a financial aid "budget" approaching $100 million, you can absorb a few million if needed and even adjust targets for the following year if you need to.
The important bit is that this policy only applies to U.S. students. UR is need-aware for international students (which make up ~10% of the student population), and that's where they can massage things to help the money work out if needed.
When you're dealing with thousands of applicants and admits, you can be fairly confident in what you're going to get overall financial need-wise. You're not suddenly going to get 100% of the class needing aid. When you're dealing with a financial aid "budget" approaching $100 million, you can absorb a few million if needed and even adjust targets for the following year if you need to.
My issue with this math is it does not subtract out the endowment fund contribution. The people who donated to the endowment were not doing it only to benefit the students with low income families. Also, this expense includes all the scholarships.
It does not seem fair that an upper middle class families can not afford to send their kids to U of R, while a poor kid can all most go for free. The tuition is very low and can be paid with a federal student aid loan that might not have to be paid back.
To make matters even worse, I bet the academic admission stands are lower for those getting financial assistance.
Scholarships are not an expense out of the $300 million...they're a subtraction on the revenue side. Instead of bringing in $200 million in tuition as we would if everyone paid full-freight, we bring in $110 million with $90 million written off as financial aid. The endowment provides over $120 million annually, so it covers way more than just financial aid.
It's also important to note that a lot of UR's financial aid isn't need-based. Only 37% of undergrads end up being eligible for it. So other types of aid like athletic and merit represent a significant amount of our overall aid budget.
It's also important to note that a lot of UR's financial aid isn't need-based. Only 37% of undergrads end up being eligible for it. So other types of aid like athletic and merit represent a significant amount of our overall aid budget.
when I went to UR, it was a great school and a great value for all that attended. the large endowment was used to keep tuition down. then we (Cooper) decided we shouldn't strive to for the value part. let's charge what the market will bear, but give more aid. that's great for some but prohibitive for many. I'm a UR grad who would have loved my kid at UR. it didn't make financial sense.
as for giving money to any school, everyone can do whatever they want with their money. I'll give to a sports program I care about. but there's no chance I'll ever add to an endowment. not even if I won the lottery. I can't imagine a worse use of my charitable dollars than to give it to a school sitting on billions with the biggest goal to grow those billiions for their rankings.
as for giving money to any school, everyone can do whatever they want with their money. I'll give to a sports program I care about. but there's no chance I'll ever add to an endowment. not even if I won the lottery. I can't imagine a worse use of my charitable dollars than to give it to a school sitting on billions with the biggest goal to grow those billiions for their rankings.
As much as I don't love the cost increases in higher education, I think UR has been pretty responsible, and a growing endowment has helped keep costs down. Yes, the change in tuition strategy increased the burden on those at the higher end, but overall, tuition/room/board has declined as a share of operating revenue.
The endowment's contribution to operating revenue has grown from 25% to 39%. While the list price for cost of attendance has tripled (ouch), the net tuition/room/board received has "only" doubled.
Find another $5 billion in the couch cushions for the endowment and they might be close to making it free.
The endowment's contribution to operating revenue has grown from 25% to 39%. While the list price for cost of attendance has tripled (ouch), the net tuition/room/board received has "only" doubled.
Find another $5 billion in the couch cushions for the endowment and they might be close to making it free.
It is ok if you do not want to contribute to the endowment, but you are completely wrong in your statement that the university's biggest goal is to "grow the billions for their rankings". If this were the case they wouldn't have need blind admissions and a very high payout ratio compared to other endowments.
If endowment size wasn't important to rankings - then why even publish the size of the endowment? Private school - we can certainly, along with all the other large endowment private schools - keep that information private. But they all make it public - why? Cause its a measuring stick. And a reason we have some many in the giving office working to grow the endowment.
I am not saying that is ALL the University is trying to do. But it certainly is a goal in their minds. They also want to grow the endowment to get more money to use for students and projects - of course. But another portion is growing to get up the rankings. Its not #1 on the list - but its up there.
I am not saying that is ALL the University is trying to do. But it certainly is a goal in their minds. They also want to grow the endowment to get more money to use for students and projects - of course. But another portion is growing to get up the rankings. Its not #1 on the list - but its up there.
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This would be the issue. I would have a feeling even if we all decided on this board to ban together and make a collective for men's b-ball. I would expect the University to shut it down and not accept it unless they could use money for all sports. And then people in the collective, myself included - would leave and say no - cause we want to direct our funds to the right sports and players.
Football could be very useful as the NIL money could be used to provide support to players not on scholarship, so in a way - it becomes another avenue to give more scholarships. And at UR and the 1AA level - that could be key - to get 10 more players on full ride than before because football, with injuries and all - depth is a huge factor.
It’s a a legal requirement. As a nonprofit, they have to file a 990 with the IRS every year.
agreed, of course not the biggest goal. that was hyperbole.
but they used to use the endowment to keep tuition low for everyone. now they charge an absurd amount for those who they deem can afford it. they said I could afford it. I said I can't.
I have to file taxes with the IRS each year, doesn't mean I post my AGI on my Facebook profile or at the bottom of my email signature.
They post it and the colleges get ranked on it because its a measuring stick. And just look at the list of schools with top endowments - its all the "elite" schools and mostly private. That is not a coincidence.
But the point above I tend to agree with. Could we make the school more affordable, maybe use more of the endowment and knock it down in size to maybe just 1.5 billion in order to drop tuition for everyone. Could UR be more affordable - either through endowment or other means - 100%, but they are charging what the market will bear AND - in another unpopular opinion - there is some relationship between sticker price and perceived quality. The higher the price, the better the school perceives to be. And UR - like many other of these big endowment schools - fall into that.
You wish - everyone would be going to school for a lot less than 77K.
Back to NIL talk - how much money do you think you need to get a collective started? Asking for a friend.
I like it - its like a monthly membership plan with a few benefits.
Simple Math - if we could get 1,000 Spider Fans to commit $500 for the year ($42 a month) - that would be $500K a year - that sounds like a good start to spread some money around.......
Simple Math - if we could get 1,000 Spider Fans to commit $500 for the year ($42 a month) - that would be $500K a year - that sounds like a good start to spread some money around.......
We may have a good base of alumni that cares and donates, but it’s a stretch to say it’s large.
