by Timothy R. McIntire
“Endowment.”  Those in schools who have it are taller, stronger, and handsomer than the rest of us; those who don’t are fraught with not-so-secret envy.
But hold on:

• What is an endowment?
• For what is it used?
• Who pays for it and when?
• Why should donors invest in it?
• Can you spend it?

In January, a pivotal work arrived, not exactly dropped like manna from heaven, but arising from my Blackberry via Google alert on “independent schools.”  Eisbrod and Asch’s “Endowment for a Rainy Day” in Stanford Social Innovation Review is a quick read, and can re-attire you in understanding the intentions, limitations, and potentials for establishing, maintaining, and spending endowed monies.
This topic strikes me as important because there is no other that is so little understood and yet so deeply revered.  Just as in teaching we long to be tenured, in the establishment of our schools we yearn to be endowed.  In contrast, what teaching and schools require in the temporal world is viability.  When we are no longer viable as professionals or institutions we should pronounced as what we are.  Dead.  Endowment for life support is an unworthy use.  Endowment for our current rainy day can keep our viable work progressing and especially serve our needs in areas of financial aid and professional development.  
Read this report so that you can

• more fully understand the purposes of an endowment;
• escape measuring your school’s worth against anything except your intentions as stated in your Mission and Core Values;
• spend endowed funds for rainy day needs and those opportunities that are better not covered by tuitions;
• meet the intentions of donors who have expectations that their investment will be utilized and not maintained like crown jewels.