Last December The Duke Endowment—the private foundation created in 1924 by University founder James B. Duke that is not affiliated with the University or the Duke University Endowment—proudly announced that it could count itself among a handful of American charitable trusts to have given away a total of more than $2.3 billion.
The Campaign for Duke—the University’s most recent large-scale fundraising initiative—raised practically the same amount of money in just eight years, between 1996 and 2003. The Duke Endowment’s financial contributions to the University are not as fundamental to the institution’s survival as they once were, given that the Endowment provides for only a small fraction of the University’s annual operating costs. “The relationship with the University now is basically one of partnership,” said David Roberson, director of communications for The Duke Endowment.
Still, the University announced in January that it would receive almost $15 million from the Endowment. The funds will go to various areas of the University including undergraduate education initiatives, Perkins Library, the Duke Law School Library, Goodson Chapel at the Divinity School, medical and health initiatives of Duke University Health System and other priorities identified by President Richard Brodhead. The Endowment remains “by far the largest source of private funding the University has,” said Peter Vaughn, director of communications and donor relations for University development, and “we continue to depend on it.”
While the University continues to be the principal beneficiary of The Duke Endowment—it has received more than $723 million between 1924 and 2003—today the Endowment’s grants account for less than 2 percent of the University’s annual operating costs. “[James B.] Duke made it clear that he wanted to help Duke University above any other institution in North and South Carolina,” Roberson said.
The governing document of The Duke Endowment, the Duke Indenture, specified that 32 percent of the foundation’s original corpus, or the original $40 million used to establish the endowment prior to Duke’s death, was to go to Duke University. When Duke died in 1925, less than a year after establishing the Endowment, his will left an additional $67 million to the Endowment.
The University continues to receive an amount equal to 32 percent of the original corpus of $40 million as unrestricted funds. But in order to receive funds from what has grown from the additional $67 million portion of the Endowment, the University must propose specific projects it wants to fund.
In 1924 Duke established The Duke Endowment using shares of Duke Power Company stock. The foundation was to support “selected programs of higher education, heath care, children’s welfare, and spiritual life,” in North and South Carolina, according to the Endowment’s website. Duke is one of only four “selected” institutions of higher education that receive funds from the Endowment. The others are Davidson College and Furman University, which each receive 5 percent of the Endowment’s original corpus, and Johnson C. Smith University, which receives 4 percent of the original corpus.
The same year he created the Endowment, Duke also created and funded the establishment of Duke University through the Endowment’s Indenture of Trust. Duke had envisioned the Endowment as a tool to oversee both Duke Power and Duke University.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s there was “a period of time where the Endowment probably involved itself in the administration in unhelpful ways,” Roberson said. Consequently, officials decided that such involvement was inappropriate and today The Duke Endowment, Duke Power and Duke University are independent entities with individual governance, staff and goals.
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