Endowment is crucial to becoming a premier institution of higher education.
Earnings from endowment help fund scholarships, fellowships, academic seminars, curriculum development, chairs, professorships, visiting lecturers, research initiatives, and much, much more. By building the university's invested capital base, these educational priorities can enjoy a secure financial future, enabling a shift in focus from that of raising funds to one of long-term planning and project development. That amount would support an undergraduate scholarship, one of the many named giving opportunities that a donor can designate to fund through endowment. Only a portion of the principal's earnings is distributed annually for expenditure. George Mason's current spending, or payout, rate is a percentage of the endowment's fair market value averaged over a 12-month period.