PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 7, Oct. 6, 2005

$151.5 million in private gifts support UI programs

Gifts to the UI and the UI Foundation for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2005, totaled $151.5 million, according to Stephen K. Rugg, UI chief financial officer and treasurer of the UI Foundation. Of the $151.5 million received, $36.9 million was given to the UI directly and $114.6 million was contributed through the foundation.

Rugg announced the private gift figures during the business session of the foundation’s 70th annual meeting, held Sept. 23. The foundation is the private gift procurement arm of the UI.

Of the $151.5 million in private support received last fiscal year, $55.4 million, or 36 percent, came from alumni and friends, $45.1 million (30 percent) was from corporations, $36.1 million (24 percent) was from foundations and $14.9 million (10 percent) was from associations.

Private gifts support a number of programs across the campuses at Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana-Champaign. Last fiscal year, $30.4 million of the $151.5 million raised was added to the endowment. Student financial aid in the form of scholarships, fellowships and student loans received $4.9 million in contributions. Donors to the UI provided $22 million to academic divisions, $41.3 million for research, $10 million for buildings and equipment, $12.6 million for public service and extension, and $3 million for faculty and staff compensation. Gifts to UI athletics at all three campuses increased by $1.5 million over the preceding year totaling $7.1 million.

Of the $151.5 million received last year, 77 percent or $116.1 million was designated by donors for current use. Those funds provided support to a number of programs across all of the university’s campuses. Twenty percent or $30.4 million was invested in endowed funds, which are held in pooled investment accounts under the policy supervision of the Investment Policy Committee of the Foundation Board and the Finance and Audit Committee of the UI Board of Trustees. Earnings from endowed funds help support an array of university endeavors, including student financial aid, faculty and programs. Such investments also provide specified annuity and life-income funds for many donors.

The UI’s combined active and deferred endowment stood at $1.656 billion as of June 30, 2005. The active endowment, which represents 69 percent of the university’s endowment picture, grew to $1.148 billion by the end of last June.

Also included in the UI’s total endowment is $374.3 million designated as revocable deferred gifts. Another $133.1 million of the endowment is in
charitable trusts and other irrevocable gifts held by the UI Foundation and others.

The foundation’s endowment goal is to provide a distribution to the university each year to meet its spending needs coupled with a desire to protect the purchasing power of the endowment against inflation. Over the past 10 years, the investment return allowed the Foundation not only to meet the spending and inflation objectives, but also permitted a net real return to the endowment of 1.6 percent.

Growth of the endowment during the past decade, Rugg said, has enhanced many important academic efforts at the UI. For instance, the library’s endowment has risen from $10.3 million in 1995 to $29.6 million as of June 30 this year. Endowment for professorships has increased from $26.2 million to over $74.9 million. Graduate fellowships have climbed from $29.1 to $79 million. Endowed chairs have soared from $35.4 million ten years ago to $120.8 million by the end of FY 05. And undergraduate scholarships and student aid endowment jumped from $41.7 million to $154.9 million over the past 10 years.

“Total market returns,” Rugg said, “combined with new-gift development have produced a total endowment today that is nearly three times what it was 10 years ago, rising from $589.9 million to $1.656 billion. That translates to total endowment growth of 11 percent annually over the past decade.”

Private gifts announced
Private gifts totaling more than $8 million earmarked for UI programs at Chicago, Springfield and Urbana-Champaign were announced at the UI Foundation’s annual meeting.

Gifts made to the Urbana-Champaign campus include:

• An outright gift of more than $3 million from David C. and Jane Y. Eades of Champaign will support research on orthoptera (an order of insects that includes grasshoppers, crickets and locusts) in the Center for Biodiversity in the Illinois Natural History Survey at the UI. David Eades is an adjunct professional scientist in the Illinois Natural History Survey.
• Seven-figure support from Peter B. and Kim B. Fox of Champaign will establish four Fox Family professorships, one each in the College of Business, the department of electrical and computer engineering, the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and a fourth as designated by the Urbana campus chancellor. The purpose of the fund is to stimulate entrepreneurship and economic development in Champaign County.
  
• Outright and deferred gifts totaling more than $1 million from James R. Beck of Indianapolis, will support scholarships and fellowships for students in the department of chemistry and the department of microbiology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
  
• An outright gift of $1 million from Jon David and Elizabeth A. Epstein of Galveston, Texas, will create a professorship and provide research and program support in health-care law and policy in the College of Law. Their support will establish the first named program in the college.
  
• An outright gift of $1 million from John H. Bruning of Pittsford, N.Y., establishes the Y.T. Lo Endowed Chair in Electromagnetic Theory and Optics in the department of electrical and computer engineering. The chair honors the late UI alumnus and professor Yuen Tze Lo, who served as Bruning’s adviser.

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