Moreover, donations are mostly too small and irregular to support long-term endowment schemes or big capital projects.
What this leasing arrangement does for the church, and for the neighborhood it's in, is like creating a long-term endowment that enables us to sustain our mission".
But a proposed sale of the property, intended to bolster the foundation's finances and create a long-term endowment, has backfired.
For Beth Medrash Govoha the project "represents a prudent risk and an opportunity to create a serious long-term endowment for the college, as well as jobs for students and the township," said George Kline, chairman of its committee for development and endowment.
But steady long-term endowments like that of MorseLife have been his bread and butter for years.
Over the long term, Yale's endowment returned an average of 16.62% annually between 1985 and fiscal 2008, while Harvard's endowment returned more than 15% a year over the same period.
As long term investors, fiduciaries of endowments need not worry unduly about short-term results.
Endowment fund GMG has an endowment fund consisting of diversified medium and long term focussed investments managed by a number of specialist fund managers.
But for the guardians of a college endowment that is nearly 700 years old, long term really means long.
Like so many schools, we had a significant drop in our endowment, which makes it unviable in the long term to continue to offer full-tuition scholarships to every student.
Supporters of Mr. Swensen's endowment model contend that running a diversified portfolio is smart for the long term if the fund avoids both excess leverage and a concentration in illiquid investments, which cannot be easily converted to cash.
