Athletic Endowments

Gifts to endowments provide lasting financial stability and help open doors to initiatives that are essential to providing additional opportunities for student-athletes to learn, grow, and compete—and to strive toward even greater success. Below are several types of endowments that support BU Athletics.

Scott Graham
Executive Director
Annual Giving
617-353-1344
hofmanng@bu.edu

Endowed Scholarships

Endowed scholarships help to provide the resources necessary to attract talented athletes to Boston University. A fund can be named in honor of the donor, or someone else the donor designates. The naming of permanent endowments must be approved by the University.

Endowed scholarships are invested with the University’s endowment and earn income in perpetuity for student aid. The Board of Trustees and Treasurer have established a payout rate to protect the purchasing power of the endowment. Earnings and capital appreciation over the payout rate are reinvested into the principal to keep it growing.

An endowment to support a full athletic scholarship can be established with a gift of $1,000,000. An endowed partial scholarship can be established at a minimum level of $100,000.

Learn more about establishing and contributing to athletics scholarships at BU.

Program Endowment

The intercollegiate athletics landscape is constantly evolving, rushing forward as we compete to provide the best possible experience for our student-athletes, campus community, and fans. Meanwhile, costs of salaries and benefits, scholarships, recruiting, team travel and other expenses are escalating, some of them faster than the rate of inflation.

The long-term solution to keeping pace with these expenses is endowment. An endowment fund can be established for $100,000 or more and designated for a specific sport program. Each gift of endowment for sport program is invested and earns income for the operating budget of that sport in perpetuity.

Endowed Coaching Positions

Competition is intense to hire and retain coaches who can develop individual athletes and programs to their full potential. In this competition, the endowment of a head coaching position creates stability of funding for that position and plays a significant role in the department’s ability to attract and retain the best coaches in the country. The income from this endowment helps defray the salary and other related expenses of the head coach for a particular sport.