Endowment
Generous gifts of endowment from alumni, parents, and friends—and careful stewardship of their investments—are a vital component of Saint Mary's financial stability.
Growing the endowment
The Saint Mary's College endowment is the cornerstone of our financial stability and future. Your endowed funds enable us to offer scholarships, professorships, programs and support operations, capital projects, athletics, and academic programming.
University Advancement seeks gifts of all kinds and especially encourages gifts for endowed scholarships, professorships, and chairs. Many alumni and friends remember Saint Mary’s College in their wills, estates, and through other planned giving vehicles. Unless otherwise specified, estate gifts are generally deposited into the endowment.
Giving to the endowment
An endowment gift provides ongoing and typically increasing level of support in perpetuity. While an annual gift provides support for a particular program or student for a limited period of time, typically one year. Both types of gifts, to the endowment and to current expenditures, are important to the College. For example, a one-time gift of $100,000 will provide 20 $5,000 scholarships in one year. That same gift invested in an endowment will provide one $5,000 scholarship in the year after it is received, and will continue to be awarded in perpetuity. Over time, the value of the endowed fund will grow as the overall endowment grows.
Endowment funding opportunities
Please contact the Advancement Office if you would like to learn more. Below are minimum thresholds for establishing new endowments:
- Chairs: $3,000,000
- Centers: $2,000,000
- Professorship: $1,000,000
- Fellowships Lectureship and Program: $500,000
- Restricted Scholarship: $100,000
- Unrestricted Scholarship: $50,000
Small gifts make a difference
Every gift to Saint Mary’s College is important. The advantage of an endowment is the power of compounding that typically occurs with endowment investments. Small gifts to the endowment create a snowballing effect over time.
Investing
The De La Salle Christian Brothers have a long history of socially responsible investment practices and are among the originators of impact investing. As a leading Lasallian Catholic college, Saint Mary’s adheres to these values and practices by investing with Christian Brothers Investment Services, Inc. (CBIS), a Catholic, socially responsible investment firm that serves as a trusted investment partner to Catholic institutions and investors worldwide.
The College invests endowment funds following an asset-allocation model that distributes investments over eight major asset categories, including U.S. equities; non-U.S. equities in both developed and emerging markets; private equity; core fixed income; high yield-fixed income; cash equivalents; and real assets, including private real estate funds; and publicly traded real estate investment trusts.
Investments within these categories are made with recommendations from the College’s investment consultant, Wilshire, and the approval of the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees. College financial staff, Wilshire staff, and the Investment Committee monitor the performance of individual managers and make adjustments as necessary.
As of Fall 2024, Saint Mary’s invests approximately 0.11 percent of its endowment asset base in Israel-based companies in industry sectors such as finance, information technology, and healthcare.
Contact Us
To learn more about the opportunities and rewards of establishing an endowment at Saint Mary's, please contact either:
Tom Carroll '04, MA '07
Associate Vice President
925.878.1304, tcarroll@stmarys-ca.edu
Heidi Stornetta Butler
Executive Director of Principal and Major Gifts
925.631.8666, hsb2@stmarys-ca.edu
Cavan McCarthy
Executive Director of Legacy Planning
925.631.4914, csm19@stmarys-ca.edu