BULLISH ON BARD How can I participate in the endowment challenge? Donors who want to help meet the endowment challenge can consider a planned gift or bequest. Doing so is a way to make a significant impact on Bard’s future. By including Bard in your estate plans, or designating Bard as a beneficiary of your retirement plan or other assets, you will help to provide financial security to the College and enable the continued expansion of access to a Bard education. Donors who disclose a planned commitment to Bard are recognized as members of the Margaret and John Bard Society.
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FEATURE
On April 1, 2021, Bard College accepted a $500 million challenge grant from George Soros and the Open Society Foundations (OSF). “This is the most historic moment since the College’s founding in 1860,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “When this endowment drive is complete, Bard will have a $1 billion endowment, which will ensure its pioneering mission and its academic excellence for the future.” This pledge to Bard’s unrestricted endowment is transformative for the College, and sends a powerful message that Bard’s forward-thinking and ambitious programs—in the arts and education in Annandale, in prisons, in high schools, across the United States, and around the world—are valued not just by those who have experienced them but also by those who recognize that access to a liberal arts education is a viable and necessary path to a free and open society. The OSF grant ranks among the largest gifts to higher education in the United States in recent years. (Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation in 2018 to Johns Hopkins University, which at the time already had an endowment
of $3.8 billion, is believed to be the largest.) Soros’s pledge challenges Bard to raise an additional $500 million for its endowment over the next five years, and the College is well on its way. As of October, $330 million had been raised from trustees, alumni/ae, and friends—an impressive feat and a strong show of support. Bard may be unique in its global reach and public-service mission, but it faces many of the same challenges as other private institutions of higher education. Among these are that the basic costs of providing an educational degree program have steadily risen at the same time as the college-age prospective student population has shrunk. This imbalance has resulted in increased competition with other institutions for tuition dollars from students who can afford the cost and an increasing need to provide financial aid to those who cannot. Historically, Bard has had a comparatively minimal endowment, so it has had to be far more reliant on income from tuition and philanthropy to face crises and to grow selectively. In today’s environment, however, an endowment is a necessity for long-term institutional financial health.
Students in the Class of 2025 leave the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts after the Matriculation ceremony, photo by Karl Rabe