Yale University received $231 million in endowment funds in fiscal year 2024.
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Yale reported a return on its endowment of 5.7% for the 2024 fiscal year, which ended June 30. The $2.3 billion in investment gains and $231 million in donations increased the total amount of the fund from $40.7 billion to $41.4 billion. End of 2023.
Investment growth is an improvement over the past two years, when Yale reported returns of 1.8% and 0.8%, respectively, but falls short of the performance of its six Ivy League peers. Columbia University and Brown University both posted returns of more than 11%, while Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, and Cornell University reported returns of more than 7%. Princeton University’s $34 billion endowment produced the lowest return among the Iveys in fiscal year 2024, at 3.9%.
Like many universities, Yale’s endowment is heavily invested in private equity, venture capital, and real estate, and failed to achieve stellar public market performance in fiscal year 2024. For the year ending June 30, the S&P 500 returned 22.7%. (Yale University’s former chief investment officer, David F. Swensen, was famous for the “Yale Model,” an approach to endowment investing that eschews commodities and fixed-income assets in favor of alternative investments such as hedge funds and private equity.) ).
“Given the large allocation to private assets, the private asset exit market in particular has been weak during periods of strong public market performance,” Matt Mendelsohn, chief investment officer at Yale University, said in a press release. It is expected that there will be delays during this period.” “As always, we remain focused on long-term investment success, but we recognize that doing so may result in significantly lower short-term performance.”
Over the past 10 years, Yale’s endowment has returned an average of 9.5%, and in fiscal year 2021, it returned a whopping 40.2%. The university spent $14.3 billion from its endowment over that 10-year period, and its 2024 endowment distribution totaled $2 billion. Endowment revenue is the largest source of income for the New Haven, Connecticut, university, accounting for about one-third of its annual operating budget.
