Influence of Yale’s Endowment Chief Felt Around the Nonprofit World

David F. Swensen, the veteran steward of Yale University’s $20-billion endowment, talked to The New York Times about bucking the trend of endowment managers defecting from academe for the hefty pay packages offered in the for-profit world.

During his 21 years as head of the Yale endowment, Mr. Swensen has generated an annual compound growth rate of 16.3 percent, beating the performance of every other major university endowment, according to data compiled by Yale.

Over the years, Mr. Swensen has also routinely rebuffed lucrative offers to leave Yale and cash in on his expertise.

“People think working for something other than the most money you could get is an odd concept, but it seems a perfectly natural concept to me,” said Mr. Swensen. “When I see colleagues of mine leave universities to do essentially the same thing they were doing but to get paid more, I am disappointed because there is a sense of mission” in endowment work.

The newspaper says “that sense of mission has rubbed off on his apprentices at Yale, with the result that some major nonprofit organizations in the United States are now run by men and women who once worked for him: Seth Alexander at MIT, Andrew K. Golden at Princeton, D. Ellen Shuman at the Carnegie Corporation, Donna Dean at the Rockefeller Foundation, and Paula Volent at Bowdoin College.”

What’s more, leaders of other colleges also seek his advice. “In the endowment world, going to see David for advice is like going to the pope,” a trustee of another Ivy League institution told the newspaper.

Read The Chronicle’s most recent coverage of endowments at nonprofit groups in the United States.

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