im actually terrified for applications though.
Thank you for sharing this analysis. It’s much more insightful than the bad data on BSR. (I’m always impressed by the members of this forum.)
A few observations:
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Mercersburg: The $100M donation that they got a decade ago has really changed the endowment picture for them substantially. What a great win for the students there.
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Emma Willard: I was surprised that an all-girls school had such a high endowment, especially above many all-boys schools.
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Ditto Necaspera’s comments about many GLADCHEMMS schools being lower in the rankings than what I would have expected, particularly Loomis.
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Surprising to see Berkshire still so low given how popular it is right now. I would have thought that the endowment was higher.
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Any other surprises for people?
This is terrific.
One thing I’m wondering about is Milton. The number of students associated with the Upper School (high school) is correct, but I would think that the endowment would be applied against the whole school, making the endowment per student lower still. Or is that already factored in?
Are there others on this list that are K-12?
School endowments are an interesting topic.
Raw endowment balances are really only the beginning of the story though.
The Form 990 filings also disclose the portion of the endowment that is restricted versus “free” (or comparatively unrestricted).
The percentages vary dramatically from school to school. I lay out a few of the figures below to illustrate the point.
PEA:
-Endowment: $1.519B
-Percent ”Unrestricted”: 16.51%
-Unrestricted Endowment: $250.8M
PA:
-Endowment: $1.417B
-Percent ”Unrestricted”: 27.73%
-Unrestricted Endowment: $333.9M
Groton:
-Endowment: $511M
-Percent ”Unrestricted”: 45%
-Unrestricted Endowment: $230M
Deerfield:
-Endowment: $847M
-Percent ”Unrestricted”: 34%
-Unrestricted Endowment: $296.5M
SPS:
-Endowment: $702M
-Percent ”Unrestricted”: 27%
-Unrestricted Endowment: $189.5
It would be even more interesting to know the details behind the numbers, particularly for PEA and PA. I suspect that the size of their endowments and the degree to which they’re restricted go hand in hand, and reflect the compounded growth of very old gifts that were earmarked for specific purposes.
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Although it’d be easier if all gifts were unrestricted, most schools are pretty adept at using their restricted funds for things that fit their strategy and at making sure the restrictions on new restricted gifts won’t really be constraints. It’s a puzzle the finance office needs to solve, but one they are up to.
Of course, there are restrictions that keep funds from being used – the scholarship for a student from Yemen, the funds earmarked exclusively for Zamboni maintenance – but more often than not, the restricted funds get used where the donors intended, then unrestricted gifts then fill in the rest.
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Yes and no.
Certainly the schools above (and many others) have plenty of money in their endowments. They won’t be running out of money anytime soon (or ever) and have no trouble covering the costs of operations and programming at the school.
And yes, they do spend what they can first of the restricted funds before turning to the unrestricted.
But the interesting point to me is that, over time, many of the older restrictions have left the schools with gifts that are grossly underutilized both because of the restrictions on those gifts and their growth over time. Donor intent and state law make it nearly impossible to use some of these restricted gifts in certain states.
And on top of that, some of those funds may be part of the “permanent endowment”, which prohibits the use of the gift corpus and limits its use to the gains only.
In the case of PEA above, 26.61% of its endowment is designated as “permanent endowment” and therefore untouchable. That’s $404.2M.
Again, to be sure, you could run a fine school using nothing but tuition dollars and the annual investment returns from that sum, but that’s not my point.
My point is that independent school endowments are interesting and fun to compare, but a comparison of the top-line numbers only leaves out a big part of the story.
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It is pretty clear to me @gardenstategal is a boarding school insider 
I just talked to Hotchkiss’ former CFO, who said restricted gifts are not an issue. If the school cannot figure out a way to use the gift in a way that furthers its mission, they would go back to the donor, if they are alive, and ask that the restrictions be broadened. If the donor is not alive, they can petition the state attorney general to broaden the restrictions. And they have done this.
As to the permanent endowment issue, he said ALL funds, unless they have a spend down provision, become part of the permanent endowment, with only the gains, not the corpus, being available to spend.
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I agree with you that these are rarely apples to apples comparisons, and that income vs principle stipulations can make it hard to see what’s going on unless you happen to sit on the investment committee (although most schools try not to spend down principle.) My point was simply that investments reported in the broad category of restricted are largely available for use.
My experience with non-profits has been that they have done exactly what @cinnamon1212 notes - they have gone back to the donor family to tweak the purpose of the gift to keep it from getting stranded. (Reluctantly and with a cost.) But my experience doesn’t extend to all 50 states!
Thanks @IndySceptic.
Yes, you’re correct, in the case of Milton I mixed apples and oranges (as stated earlier, this list was for my own purposes.) Otherwise all school enrollment counts are for the entire school.
If you want to adjust the Milton figures, according to the NCES (‘23-’24) Milton had 715 kids in the Upper School (the school self-reports 714 on their website today) and 315 in the Lower/Middle Schools for a total enrollment of 1,030 students. So the endowment per student declines to $380K with the higher denominator. I updated this in the posted file.
The only other K-12 school on the table besides Hershey & Kamehameha (which were already flagged as K-12) is Cranbrook. For comparability, I have added to the last column the grades for schools that are not exclusively 9-12. These are mostly 6-12 and 7-12. If no grades are mentioned, it’s a 9-12 school.
Of course the draw on the endowment from lower school and non-boarding students is less significant than in the upper grades, but ceteris paribus an endowment devoted exclusively to a 9-12 student population is going to be more meaningful than if spread across lower grades.
I’ll leave the fascinating debate over restricted vs. unrestricted funds to the much more knowledgeable people on this forum.
The Airtable link is live so all changes are immediately reflected to the database.
If you anyone wants to DM me a school to add or an updated endowment/enrollment figure (I don’t have time to check for updates), I’m happy to update the database in real time as a community resource. Just please source your facts (since I will double check).
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You’re welcome, @FixItDad .
(1) The M’burg gift vaulted it into the highest ranks of endowment per student (EPS). Interesting to see what impact the $50 million NMH gift will have. NMH reports a FY24 endowment of $229 million. Add $50 million to that (I don’t think the gift is counted in there) plus some endowment gains (the S&P is up 21% since June ‘24) and you could be looking at a >$300 million endowment, which would be a $475K EPS. Transformational.
(2) Emma & Porter’s are better resourced than Salisbury & Avon (which I added for comparison). Madeira holds its own. There is a very loyal and accomplished alumnae base at the single-sex girls’ schools.
(3) The Loomis FY24 endowment of $257 million does not appear to reflect the $100 million Kravis gift. That will step it up to a $500K EPS, even before accounting for likely endowment appreciation.
(4) M’burg, Woodberry Forest, Peddie, St. Andrew’s (DE), Thacher, and St. George’s punch above their weight relative to their peers and the airtime they get on this forum. IMHO the reverse is true of Choate, St. Mark’s, Berkshire, and Kent, which are under-resourced relative to their peers and the mindshare they receive here. Not a judgment, just an observation, so please don’t shoot the messenger. These are wonderful schools. There are other schools, just as wonderful, with greater financial resources in absolute terms or relative to their student counts. That’s the story these data tell.
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Long-time non-participant here.
It caught my eye when it was suggested that Choate was relatively underresourced. This comment surprised me. Personally, I think Choate can raise money if and when it wants, based on all the campus improvements it has done the last 10 years. But fundraising for buildings doesn’t necessarily give a great picture on student resources, faculty ratios, financial aid, and many other things.
So I took a look at a bunch of 990s. Endowments can go up and down based on the market, capital campaigns, capital projects, large one-time gifts (MB, Loomis, others). But in terms of what matters, studentsresources, I was curious about what these schools spend per student per year. I looked at 2023 figures, as they had all been reported. St. Paul’s, Groton, Hotchkiss led the pack. Peddie, Kent, and Loomis trailed significantly. If I’ve made a computational mistake, please let me know.
| School | Expenses/student per year (thousands) |
|---|---|
| St. Paul’s (NH) | $151 |
| Groton | $143 |
| Hotchkiss | $139 |
| Exeter | $138 |
| Deerfield | $135 |
| Lawrenceville | $130 |
| Andover | $129 |
| Woodberry Forest | $125 |
| Mercersburg | $117 |
| St. Mark’s | $114 |
| Taft | $109 |
| Berkshire | $108 |
| Choate | $107 |
| St. Andrew’s | $102 |
| Peddie | $100 |
| Kent | $94 |
| Loomis | $92 |
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This thread is an AMA. One should ask questions to the AMA author and make corrections if she’s erred.
Bur to allow applicants and their parents to obtain the maximum benefit of the AMA with minimal clutter, extended tangents like the analysis paralysis of parsing endowment data, creating new calculations, defining terms like restricted/unrestricted, etc, really belong in its own thread.
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