As Campaign Chair for Great Returns: Augsburg’s Sesquicentennial Campaign, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with alumni, parents, and friends of the University to discuss the ways in which we can carry Augsburg’s mission into the future. On a recent trip to Florida, I met with regent emeritus Dan Anderson ‘65, who shared about his time on the Board of Regents with me.
While Dan was serving on the Board, he chaired a committee that looked into how we invest our Augsburg endowment. Compared to many private colleges, our endowment is relatively small. Dan and the committee had four goals:
- Understand the history of the endowment at Augsburg;
- Begin preliminary determinations about the role endowment should play in achieving our mission and strategies;
- Determine how endowment growth strategies should be incorporated into and aligned with other fundraising priorities; and
- Recommend an endowment growth goal and strategies that will bring Augsburg more in line with peer institutions.
Dan also shared with me the current strategy for investing Augsburg’s endowment in Commonfund, a nonprofit organization started by the Ford Foundation to help other nonprofits manage their endowment and pension funds.
Dan said, “Based on the recommendation of the Investment Committee, the Augsburg Board hired Commonfund in 2008 to provide cost effective advice relating to developing an Investment Policy Statement, to help select high profile asset managers over a wide range of asset classes to implement the asset allocation strategy called for, and to monitor the performance of these managers and provide quarterly reporting on their results.”
Through our work with Commonfund, I believe Augsburg has found a much savvier way to invest that can start to compete with schools who have the luxury of a much larger endowment.
Here’s a quick snapshot of our investments over the last few years:
In her work as chair of the Audit Committee and vice chair of the Finance Committee of the Board of Regents, Karen (Miller) Durant ‘81 has provided expert advice on Augsburg’s current investments for the endowment. Karen has been an Augsburg Regent since 2011 and has recently retired from a distinguished career in business, most recently as Vice President and Controller of Tennant Company.
“After seeing the higher level of philanthropy related to the new Center for Science, Business & Religion building, I knew focusing on increasing our endowment was the right next step,” Karen said. “Investing in our endowment, especially unrestricted cash giving, benefits Augsburg’s overall financial position. We are seeing momentum from this new Great Returns campaign that will support Augsburg’s mission and I’m completely comfortable and confident that the University will use the money in the most effective way for years to come.”
I appreciate Dan’s and Karen’s leadership and for taking the time to share this information with me. I have great confidence in the way our endowment is managed.
To learn more about how our endowment was initially established, I turned to Kristin Anderson, Augsburg’s archivist and professor of art history, who was helpful in providing a historical perspective. As with much of Augsburg’s history, she says this is a complicated issue. After a number of years of financial difficulties, Sven Oftedal started a fundraising campaign in 1877-78. It was successful, but only temporarily, and so there was an additional project to raise more money for an endowment fund. This project was approved by the Conference (the church body affiliated with Augsburg, and for which Augsburg was the seminary) in 1880. By 1882, when the campaign ended, the committee had cash and pledges of more than $50,000. (Read Carl Chrislock’s history of Augsburg, From Fjord to Freeway, for more information.) The endowment did not belong to Augsburg, but to the Conference, and so it was tangled up in the synodical mergers and lawsuits of the 1890s.
Kristin says that $50,000 was released by Augsburg and they had to restart the endowment later. She cites Chrislock again on the topic: “The 1898 settlement balanced one major concession to the Augsburg party with two less important ones to the United Church. The latter yielded title to all Augsburg Seminary real estate, both land and buildings, thereby placing the campus under the uncontested ownership of Oftedal’s corporation. In return, the Augsburg board surrendered claim to the endowment fund contributed by the Conference at the time of the union, an asset estimated to be worth approximately $49,000, that Augsburg had controlled and utilized since 1890.”
This is the same fund that Oftedal created a decade earlier, the fundraising for which was largely accomplished by Oftedal and others at Augsburg. It was, after all, created to provide ongoing support for Augsburg. Eventually, the endowment was restarted as the endowment fund we see today.
I hope you also found this information helpful in understanding Augsburg’s tireless mission to invest in our students and create a place for education that is defined by excellence in the liberal arts and professional studies that will last for generations to come. Thank you for your continued attention to our drive to build Augsburg’s endowment in Great Returns: Augsburg’s Sesquicentennial Campaign.
These are exciting times for Augsburg! Please keep the University and its students, faculty, and staff in your thoughts and prayers. If you would like to have a gift conversation or have any questions about the campaign, please reach out to me (muellerp@augsburg.edu) or Vice President for Advancement Heather Riddle (riddle@augsburg.edu).
Warmly,
Paul S. Mueller, M.D. ’84
Chair of Great Returns: Augsburg’s Sesquicentennial Campaign
