The Johns Hopkins Initiative has as one of its principal goals a substantial increase in the endowments of The Johns Hopkins Institutions. An endowment is that portion of an institution's financial resources that is held in perpetuity.
Endowment is a university's financial bedrock.
It allows an institution to be less dependent than it might otherwise be on unpredictable sources of revenue, such as research sponsorship or government aid. It allows an institution to charge students less in tuition than the full cost of an education. And it provides a research university, in particular, assurance about its financial future, enabling it to take the intellectual risks that can pay off in monumental leaps forward in knowledge. Today, Johns Hopkins University has a small endowment relative to many of its peer research universities. Because of the endowment's relatively small size, Johns Hopkins University is able to generate only about 4 percent of its annual operating budget from endowment income.