The Duke Endowment Gives Record $75 Million to Duke University for Student Financial Aid
Duke President Richard H. Brodhead has identified strengthening the university's financial aid endowment as one of his highest priorities
Monday, October 3, 2005
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Durham, N.C. -- The Duke Endowment of Charlotte is giving $75 million for
student financial aid at Duke University -- the largest single
gift made by the endowment in its 81-year history and the largest
single gift ever received by the university, Duke President Richard
H. Brodhead announced Monday.
Brodhead, who assumed Duke’s presidency in July 2004, has identified strengthening the university’s financial aid endowment as one of his highest priorities.
The $75 million commitment to be paid over three years was made by Russell M. Robinson, chairman of The Duke Endowment, at a ceremony in Duke’s Perkins Library attended by university students, faculty and staff, as well as by the endowment’s trustees who were in Durham for an annual meeting.
“Amazingly, within the very brief time since Mr. Duke’s gift creating Duke University, it has achieved his dream of attaining a place of real leadership in the educational world. An essential part of that dream is providing financial aid so that the student body can be the best available within a wide range of backgrounds and talents, without any limitation of financial constraints,” Robinson said. “Our trustees have such high confidence in President Brodhead’s leadership and such deep commitment to Mr. Duke’s dream that we have unanimously and proudly approved this gift.”
The Duke Endowment was established as a charitable trust with a $40 million gift by industrialist James Buchanan Duke in 1924. Its founding indenture required that annual income be distributed in North and South Carolina among hospitals, orphanages, the Methodist Church, three colleges and a new university to be built around Trinity College in Durham. To accomplish the last task, funds were made available for the old Trinity College campus and for the creation of a new campus -- Duke’s West Campus. The combined institution was named Duke University to honor Washington Duke, James B. Duke’s father, and his family. Since then, The Duke Endowment has been the university’s largest benefactor.
In accepting the gift, Brodhead said, “The Duke Endowment and Duke University are separate organizations with a common lineage. This university could not have become one of the world’s leading centers for teaching, scholarship and medical care without the sustained support of our friends at The Duke Endowment. They share with us a desire to realize our mutual founder’s desire to make the ‘civilizing influence’ of education available to all students with the requisite accomplishments and promise.”
Brodhead said the gift is crucial to Duke University’s long-term ability to provide strong financial aid programs for its students and their families.
“This university has many ambitions, but our first goal must be to assure that outstanding education is available to talented students regardless of their family’s financial situation. This wonderful display of generosity and foresight will enable Duke to meet this fundamental need for generations to come. We will use this unprecedented gift to encourage additional giving for student financial aid. Building permanent endowment support will help assure that Duke will never have to deny a student a place for reason of lack of means.”
Duke is among a small number of schools across the country with a “need-blind” admissions policy, admitting students without regard to their ability to pay. It commits to provide a four-year financial aid package to meet the demonstrated financial need of qualified students. About 40 percent of the university’s undergraduates qualify for need-based aid. This year, Duke budgeted about $55 million for undergraduate financial aid, 7.7 percent more than last year.
Brodhead said The Duke Endowment gift would be used as a matching fund incentive to spur additional contributions for financial aid.
The Duke Endowment has previously provided funds to stimulate giving to support financial aid at the university, most recently through its $7 million “Carolinas Challenge.” When that “challenge” ended on June 30, 2005, the contributions of 342 donors had been matched by The Endowment to yield more than $21 million for 78 new and 19 existing scholarship endowments for students from North and South Carolina. The average annual grant for a qualified student from the Carolinas was nearly $24,000 last year. More Duke undergraduates come from North Carolina than from any other state.
On Dec. 11, 1924, James B. Duke signed the Indenture of Trust that established The Duke Endowment as a perpetual trust. The indenture set forth the causes that were to receive funds: programs of higher education, health care, children’s education and spiritual life. It also explained the reasons for the choices that have guided The Duke Endowment’s philanthropy for more than eight decades.
The indenture named specifically the institutions that Duke wanted The Endowment to support: Duke University, Davidson College, Furman University, Johnson C. Smith University; not-for-profit hospitals and children’s homes in the two Carolinas; and rural United Methodist churches in North Carolina, retired pastors and their surviving families. It also gave the endowment’s trustees broad discretion to make grants for similar charitable purposes in accordance with his original wishes.
The initial $40 million that established the endowment was enhanced within a year by an additional $67 million following James B. Duke’s death. The Duke Endowment has grown dramatically over time. The market value of its assets totaled approximately $2.5 billion at the end of 2004, making it one of the largest charitable foundations in the nation and the largest in the Southeast.
