$586,651,144

[southcliffbison]

Curious if membership has declined from year to year at any other time during the D1 era?

127 folks decided not to renew their TM memberships from 2020 to 2021........ not renewing their season tickets (bison fatigue) ???

[tony]

Is it too late to donate $7?

It'd be nice to see that number up to 586,651,151 because that's the product of two prime numbers (11519*50929).

[bisonaudit]

A lot of the endowment growth in those 6 years has to be market returns as opposed to new money. Would be curious to see a breakdown instead of just the headline numbers. Not trying to rain on anyones parade, they ran a very successful campaign and raised a lot of money for the University. It’s all good. So good you don’t need to be fluffing it with easily misunderstood financial metrics.

[tony]

A lot of the endowment growth in those 6 years has to be market returns as opposed to new money. Would be curious to see a breakdown instead of just the headline numbers. Not trying to rain on anyones parade, they ran a very successful campaign and raised a lot of money for the University. It’s all good. So good you don’t need to be fluffing it with easily misunderstood financial metrics.

That's not what the thread is about though. "More than 15,000 people donated nearly $586.7 million."

Source: https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/n...-586-7-million

[bisonaudit]

That's not what the thread is about though. "More than 15,000 people donated nearly $586.7 million."

https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/n...-586-7-million

That is Briliant. As I was at pains to reiterate.

[tony]

That is Briliant. As I was at pains to reiterate.

Endowments are NOT an area of expertise for me, but I strongly suspect that almost all the growth in NDSU's endowment was from new donations because these endowments just don't take money in and invest it - they spend quite a bit. And the investments are not in the stock market, they're mostly CDs and bonds.

That said, I don't have "audit" in my user name and am not even close to being a CPA so here's some source material: NDSU_Annual_Financial_Report_FY20.pdf

BTW, if there's a report similar to this for the North Dakota Legacy Fund, I'd love to see it. I'd like to see how much they lost on foreign currency bets and how much money got invested in sure-fire winners like Kazakstan Goat Futures.

[bisonaudit]

Endowments are NOT an area of expertise for me, but I strongly suspect that almost all the growth in NDSU's endowment was from new donations because these endowments just don't take money in and invest it - they spend quite a bit. And the investments are not in the stock market, they're mostly CDs and bonds.

That said, I don't have "audit" in my user name and am not even close to being a CPA so here's some source material: NDSU_Annual_Financial_Report_FY20.pdf

BTW, if there's a report similar to this for the North Dakota Legacy Fund, I'd love to see it. I'd like to see how much they lost on foreign currency bets and how much money got invested in sure-fire winners like Kazakstan Goat Futures.

https://www.givetondsu.com/file/gove...Statements.pdf

Is the one you want to look at for the NDSU foundation. I’d direct your attention to footnote 4. Mostly not in fixed income. This is entirely appropriate for endowment funds. The investment time horizon is infinite, the risk profile should be more aggressive as long as it’s appropriately diversified because you don’t need very much of the money tomorrow or even 5 years from now. There is a lot of time to recover from losses so you can take some more risk.

The Legacy Fund was way to conservatively invested the last time I looked a few years ago. I think they’ve been trying to fix some of that but also I think they need to be careful with the push for more local investment and monitor their geographic diversity in light of the political realities being imposed on their portfolio decisions.

Legacy Fund audited reports perhaps somewhere here but not immediately clear to me where (which is a problem).
https://www.rio.nd.gov/legacy-fund

[bisonaudit]

https://www.givetondsu.com/file/gove...Statements.pdf

Is the one you want to look at for the NDSU foundation. I’d direct your attention to footnote 4. Mostly not in fixed income. This is entirely appropriate for endowment funds. The investment time horizon is infinite, the risk profile should be more aggressive as long as it’s appropriately diversified because you don’t need very much of the money tomorrow or even 5 years from now. There is a lot of time to recover from losses so you can take some more risk.

The Legacy Fund was way to conservatively invested the last time I looked a few years ago. I think they’ve been trying to fix some of that but also I think they need to be careful with the push for more local investment and monitor their geographic diversity in light of the political realities being imposed on their portfolio decisions.

Legacy Fund audited reports perhaps somewhere here but not immediately clear to me where (which is a problem).
https://www.rio.nd.gov/legacy-fund

Here’s a better link for the Legacy Fund financials. https://www.rio.nd.gov/newsletters-reports

Not very friendly for phone reading so I haven’t dug in but they’re there for anyone who’s interested.

[tony]

https://www.givetondsu.com/file/gove...Statements.pdf

Is the one you want to look at for the NDSU foundation. I’d direct your attention to footnote 4. Mostly not in fixed income. This is entirely appropriate for endowment funds. The investment time horizon is infinite, the risk profile should be more aggressive because as long as it’s appropriately diversified because you don’t need very much of the money tomorrow or even 5 years from now. There is a lot of time to recover from losses so you can take some more risk.

The Legacy Fund was way to conservatively invested the last time I looked a few years ago. I think they’ve been trying to fix some of that but also I think they need to be careful with the push for more local investment and monitor their geographic diversity in light of the political realities being imposed on their portfolio decisions.

That's a lot more long-term investment than I'd have thought they'd have. Still, it looks like NDSU's endowment fund disbursed over $50 million in the two years covered in the linked document - NDSU doesn't operate like Harvard where the disbursements are not much more than a rounding error on the total balance.

It looks like NDSU's endowment balance increased from $249 million (2019) to $325 million as of Sept. 30, 2021 (source: NDSU fundraising campaign doubles endowment - InForum) to $457 million today. How much of that increase is due to the increase in the market value of investments over and above what the fund disbursed? I have no clue, of course - just a guess (i.e. around $40 million.)

[bisonaudit]

That's a lot more long-term investment than I'd have thought they'd have. Still, I don't think NDSU operates like Harvard - it looks like NDSU's endowment fund disbursed over $50 million in the two years covered in the linked document - NDSU doesn't operate like Harvard where the disbursements are not much more than a rounding error on the total balance.

It looks like NDSU's endowment balance increased from $249 million (2019) to $325 million as of Sept. 30, 2021 (source: NDSU fundraising campaign doubles endowment - InForum) to $457 million today. How much of that do you think is increase in value of investments over and above what the fund disbursed?

I don’t have deep expertise on these fund statements but it looks to me like they made 34 and 37 million on their investments the last two years and sent 18 and 26 to the university. So 27 million would have been reinvested. Which means 49 million in new money added to the endowment.

Put another way, roughly 2/3 of the increase is from new contributions while the other 1/3 is reinvestment of returns.

Edit:
Your numbers and my numbers were on slightly different time frames so here it is from
Footnote 15 pages 30-31. In the two years covered by the financial statements (calendar 2019-2020) the endowment increased from 208 (all numbers in millions) to 273 on 31 in contributions and 55 of investment returns with 21 in distributions. So that’s basically 50/50. Half the growth from new contributions and half from net reinvestment.