School NEWS
ENDOWMENT: Making a difference
By James McMillan, director of advancement. enjoy my work at Selwyn House. I particularly enjoy it when people ask me what I do and I tell them that I am the Director of Advancement. The usual response is, “What does a Director of Advancement do?” I tell them that I work with all the constituents of the school and that the headmaster, Hal Hannaford, and I travel all over Canada, parts of the USA and even to London, England to meet with alumni and friends of the school and bring them up-to-date about what the school has done and where it is going. I also tell them that I spend a lot of time fundraising. This is usually when they start looking nervous, but I tell them that the fundraising part is a natural progression after friendraising, because good fundraising is usually the result of good friendraising and, when people understand what the school is doing, they will want to help in some way because they believe in what we are doing. The exciting part about fundraising at Selwyn House is that we have been fortunate to have been very successful over the last decade at raising funds for new construction, renovations and endowment. Most people can understand when money is needed to build or renovate, but endowment is a topic that I tend to spend more time explaining to people. Selwyn House’s endowment is just over $10 million in cash and pledges. Although we do not have the highest endowment of all the independent schools in Canada, we are ranked quite high. Our goal is to double our endowment to $20 million so that the school can depend on a steady annual income of about five per cent, or $1 million, to support bursaries,
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professional development, and program enhancements. The school’s endowment is managed by The Veritas Fund, which has its own board of trustees, chaired by Thomas Birks ’61, and the board is responsible for supervising and managing the investment of the funds. They choose the portfolio managers and review the performance of the fund. The endowment fund has been accumulating donations and interest since the early eighties, but the majority of our present endowment has been raised since about 2000. Each year, the school launches various types of fundraising programs or special campaigns, and each year our alumni, parents of alumni, current parents, students, faculty and staff, friends, foundations and corporations respond with amazing generosity. Donors give for many reasons, but primarily because they believe in what the school is doing or planning to do. However, when it comes to endowment, some donors would like their gift to be designated to a named fund. A named fund is created by a class, family or group to either honour someone who has passed away, honour a staff member who has retired, or to create funding for a specific purpose within the school. Within the endowment fund, about half of the school’s endowment is designated as general, and the other half is designated towards named funds. As of 2010, all bursaries are needs-based and must be applied for each year. If the financial situation of his family has not changed dramatically, a student may continue to receive a bursary until he graduates or leaves the school. There are no more merit-based scholarships at Selwyn House, except for those that were given out prior to 2010. Since these bursaries were for five years, they will be completed by 2013. The General Endowment Fund accounts for about 70 per cent of bursaries issued each year. The remaining bursaries are covered by the named endowment funds. Some of these funds have the capacity to offer full bursaries to a student for anywhere from one to five years, and the other named funds offer partial bursaries for anywhere from one to five years. All of these funds, the general and the named, continuously grow. Donations are received each year and the interest earned in the endowment fund is always added proportionally to each named fund. A named fund will not be used until it reaches a minimum total of $25,000. At this point, five per cent of the fund will be included in each year’s disbursement for bursaries or its designated use. The named funds in the Selwyn House Endowment Fund are divided into two categories: full and partial bursary. A full bursary is one that has the capacity to offer the equivalent of a full tuition for any grade level. A partial bursary can be anywhere from $1,250 up to about 50 per cent of the annual tuition.
