It’s the single largest gift UNCF has ever received
The United Negro College Fund announced a donation of $100 million from the Lilly Endowment Inc., the single largest unrestricted gift to the organization since its founding 80 years ago.
The gift announced Thursday will go toward a pooled endowment for the 37 historically Black colleges and universities that form UNCF’s membership, with the goal of boosting the schools’ long-term financial stability.
HBCUs, which have .
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$100 million gift from Lilly Endowment to United Negro College Fund will support HBCU endowments
On a per-pupil basis, private non-HBCU endowments are about seven times the size of private HBCU endowments, according to a report from The Century Foundation. For public schools, the non-HBCU institutions on average have a per-pupil endowment that is three times larger than their public HBCU counterparts.
“We don’t have the same asset base that private non-HBCUs have,” Lomax said. HBCUs lack “a strong balance sheet as a result. And they don’t really have the ability to invest in the things that they think are important.”
Schools with substantial unrestricted financial resources are better able to weather crises and invest in large expenses that have long-term impact, such as infrastructure repairs.
The financial disparities between HBCUs and their counterparts, in many ways, mirror the racial wealth gap between Black and white families, particularly in the ability to create lasting wealth. The pooled endowment, Lomax said, is meant to provide some of that stability to member schools.
“Black families have fewer assets than non-Black families,” Lomax said. “They live paycheck to paycheck. Many of our smaller HBCUs live on the tuition revenue semester by semester. They need a cushion. This is that cushion.”
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