About the Endowment
Discover how strategic investments can enhance our college's future and support our mission.
What is the Endowment?
The endowment is a permanent, dedicated pool of funds, primarily composed of donations, invested to support the College’s mission. It ensures that a Pomona education remains accessible to students of all backgrounds for generations to come.
The Endowment Supports Pomona College in a Variety of Ways
Endowments provide essential financial support to colleges and universities, enabling them to offer scholarships, fund research initiatives, and maintain state-of-the-art facilities. By generating a steady income stream, endowments help ensure the institution's long-term financial stability and academic excellence.
Pomona's endowment exists to support the College in perpetuity. Like most institutions, Pomona spends around 5% of the total value ($3.0B) of the endowment each year.
The majority of financial aid is funded by Pomona's endowment at approximately 60%, or $36m.
The endowment payout supports all parts of the College's budget, including faculty salaries, athletics, and research, to name a few.
How Students Benefit from Pomona’s Endowment
The College spends roughly $120,000 per year to provide a Pomona education to each student. Student revenues from tuition and other payments account for about half that figure. The rest comes from the annual endowment payout, fundraising and other sources. Every student’s education is subsidized by the endowment.
Current Asset Allocation & Performance
Pomona’s endowment is invested across a mix of asset classes to achieve a balance between growth and stability. Our current asset allocation is as follows:
The Endowment Tax
The endowment tax is a levy applied to the net investment income of universities with endowments greater than $500,000 per student. Since its inception in 2017, Pomona College has paid over $16mm in taxes, roughly equivalent to 184 full scholarships.
Congress is contemplating an increase in the tax that would raise Pomona's annual tax bill to ~$40 million dollars, or roughly two-thirds of our total financial aid budget. An increase of this magnitude will make it difficult for institutions like Pomona to further their commitment to making a liberal arts education affordable for students from all backgrounds.
