Endowments

[CaBisonFan]

I thought about putting this in the G&G Collective thread but it's a different (although related) topic.

I remember hearing that even as the funds were raised for the IPF, significant progress was made toward getting scholarships endowed. I think this is even more important now that there are additional funding needs (NIL, etc.)

Does anyone have any current information on this?

I know Jay is targeting new or different money but there is surely some overlap and the more that can be done to not have to raise the full scholarship funds every year, the better.

The first school that I ever heard of that had endowments was USC... with endowments for all of the starting positions.

[HerdBot]

IMO, if you want to support scholarships through an endowment, donate to the football endowment directly. They already have a solid number to work with and it eases the burdon for Teammakers. I imagine the collective wants to build the membership first but I'm only speculating

A collective endowment would take a huge donor with a limited short term payout. Example a half million dollar endowment with a 5-6% return is only $25,000 a year max. Probably less. What would 25k get you? 1 student athlete would get a full year tuition, room, board, meals & books.

Where it gets tricky is allocating it. It almost has to be someone on the roster who is a walk on or partial. It's more challenging to offer a new recruit a full ride because they arent on the roster yet.

I like the idea of finding sponsors to offer grants to upgrade partial scholarships. When you upgrade 2 half scholarships to a 3/4 or full ride, that opens up 1 to 1 - 1/2 scholarships for new recruits.

So a $25k donation could give more bang for the buck

Getting sponsors to donate towards a collective scholarship fund seems more practical and an easier sell. It's affordable advertising. Simply put there are more businesses willing to drop 25k than 500k. What good advertising. On behalf of Pro Seed (or pick a random Ag company), the collective would like to offer you a $2,500 grant

Also NDSU should take advantage of the free tuition program for families who make less than 80k. This is for any ND or MN resident

[NDSU92]

IMO, if you want to support scholarships through an endowment, donate to the football endowment directly. They already have a solid number to work with and it eases the burdon for Teammakers. I imagine the collective wants to build the membership first but I'm only speculating

A collective endowment would take a huge donor with a limited short term payout. Example a half million dollar endowment with a 5-6% return is only $25,000 a year max. Probably less. What would 25k get you? 1 student athlete would get a full year tuition, room, board, meals & books.

Where it gets tricky is allocating it. It almost has to be someone on the roster who is a walk on or partial. It's more challenging to offer a new recruit a full ride because they arent on the roster yet.

I like the idea of finding sponsors to offer grants to upgrade partial scholarships. When you upgrade 2 half scholarships to a 3/4 or full ride, that opens up 1 to 1 - 1/2 scholarships for new recruits.

So a $25k donation could give more bang for the buck

Getting sponsors to donate towards a collective scholarship fund seems more practical and an easier sell. It's affordable advertising. Simply put there are more businesses willing to drop 25k than 500k. What good advertising. On behalf of Pro Seed (or pick a random Ag company), the collective would like to offer you a $2,500 grant

Also NDSU should take advantage of the free tuition program for families who make less than 80k. This is for any ND or MN resident

Are we not already fully funded on scholarships? The only impact of donating to the scholarship fund is that the school can then release the same amount of money to be used elsewhere.

[td577]

I know UT has one of the largest endowments and they are finding scholarships with a fraction of the interest.

I know being well endowed isn't everything and not from personal experience. Delaware supposedly has this awesome endowment, yet their athletic budget is almost 90% funded with government money. NDSU's doing something right and continuing to grow those programs like endowments will do nothing but help.



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[GreenfieldBison]

Are we not already fully funded on scholarships? The only impact of donating to the scholarship fund is that the school can then release the same amount of money to be used elsewhere.

Endowments are also subject to market downturns. Witness 2022 endowment performance. Overfunding will help to cushion these events.

[Gully]

Are we not already fully funded on scholarships? The only impact of donating to the scholarship fund is that the school can then release the same amount of money to be used elsewhere.

I'm not an expert on this but here is my understanding.

Yes, we are "fully funded" in the sense that we raise money and utilize the full amount of scholarships allowed. However, a big chunk of these funds have to be raised each year through TMs dues, which keeps a lot of pressure and has some element of risk.

Raising the endowments to a level that scholarship could be funded in perpetuity would take the pressure off and make it easier to move to FBS because then TM funds could be used for other things.

[HerdBot]

Are we not already fully funded on scholarships? The only impact of donating to the scholarship fund is that the school can then release the same amount of money to be used elsewhere.

No.

Teammakers pays for the scholarships. The athletics scholarship endowment is growing, but isnt big enough to fund 100%, so Teammakers makes up the difference The goal is to get it to that point so Teammakers can use their revenue for other projects.

https://www.inforum.com/sports/bison...ver-70-million

NDSU's athletic scholarship endowment quietly goes over $70 million
Hope is to reach $125 million that would annually fund all 192 full rides

The Collective can help go above and beyond the 63 full rides since it's a private business

[NDSU92]

No.

Teammakers pays for the scholarships. The athletics scholarship endowment is growing, but isnt big enough to fund 100%. The goal is to get it to that point so Teammakers can use their revenue for other projects.

https://www.inforum.com/sports/bison...ver-70-million

The way I read your post it sounds like you’re saying we don’t offer 63 scholarships in football. Fully endowing the scholarship fund would not give us more scholarships to allocate.

[Gully]

The way I read your post it sounds like you’re saying we don’t offer 63 scholarships in football. Fully endowing the scholarship fund would not give us more scholarships to allocate.

That's not what he's saying. He's saying the endowments don't pay for all 63 scholarships. TMs has to annually raise the money to pay for the rest.

[GreenfieldBison]

Just to be thorough, referencing that linked article in post #17, the NDSU athletic department offers 192 scholarships, 63 of which are allocated to football. I assume they all cost the same amount.