(04-30-2018 09:27 PM)DoubleDogDare Wrote: You guys (potomac and jmu'fan'2008) seem like real fun to be around. OP didn't take a jab at anyone, just said he was "surprised." Gave kudos to Richmond (which was kind of lame but I like to think it was a motivating factor) but ended the post with positivity and encouraging everyone to step up for the university we all love.
Don't act like a$$hat$ and bash him for no reason. At least he quoted facts (dated but whatever). "Endowment" has barely been mentioned in any posts since 2016 and mostly as a throwaway comment in larger discussions.
Is this an enlightening post? No, but OP didn't piss in your beer so chill the fudge out and go donate.
Wasn't trying to be a dick, this just gets frequently beaten to death. It was also late at night and I read it as a dig at JMU because we are so low below two private schools (which is silly). Us closing in on $100 million (or surpassing it) is actually surprisingly high to me. That means we've more than doubled in the last decade and tripled in the last 13-14 years.
http://www.jmu.edu/give/donors/endowment.shtml
Just to review the reasons why it's low (or at least lower than many others):
* JMU is a public university that uses the endowment for many things that include schloarships, paying for professors and fellowships, and being able to pay things off without increasing fees. The state provides a lot of dollars to handle many of our other costs (such as capital projects, which if you look at JMU is A LOT of money). Private universities don't get money from the state for capital projects, so they are required to have a significantly larger amount of money in the bank to continue to function. This is why it's ridiculous to compare us to any private school.
* We started as a teacher's college and that is still a significant chunk of our grads
* While the normal school was started in 1908, it wasn't full-time coed until 1968
* A very large percentage of JMU grads are under 50, which means they're not ready to start making large donations
* An even larger percentage of JMU grads are not yet at the age where they're making planned gifts. As morbid as it is, this is where many older universities make a lot of their money
* We don't have any high-dollar grad programs like a law or med school
JMU is a relatively young public university that isn't in the top couple schools in the state and doesn't have a law or med school.
Having said all that, it has always been odd that the university struggles to raise dollars even though JMU is consistently rated highly in best-value, "right choice", and grads who love their alma mater. Something like 7% of grads are donors (that has hopefully increased since I heard that stat). We are on the right track, but we still need to improve. The new business school upgrades have the potential to help a lot down the road.