Our Greatest Impact Happens Together
Endowment Report 2023/2024
At Waterloo, endowed gifts like yours ensure discovery and innovation thrive. Your support helps advance health care, protect our planet, build equity and prosperity and harness tech for good. Together, we are solving big problems, building tomorrow’s leaders and creating better futures for us all. Thank you.”
NENONE DONALDSON, VICE-PRESIDENT, ADVANCEMENT
In 2023-2024, 856 individually named endowments generated $13,500,000 million to support vital resources, including scholarships, funding research, chairs, professorships and more.
$557,600,000
Market value
Market Value, as at April 30, 2024. The value at which investments in the endowment pool could be sold in the open market.
$469,100,000
Book value
Book Value, as at April 30, 2024. The value of all contributions and capitalized earnings that have been deposited into the endowment principal.
Endowment Fund Management
Endowed funds are invested with the future in mind. Protecting and growing the endowment to ensure an enduring source of revenue remains a top priority. As a result, the University integrates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into investment decisions with the belief that this approach is expected to enhance the long-term value of investment performance and reduce the risk of loss.
For more information about how the University integrates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into investment decisions, please visit our responsible investing web page.
Portfolio Asset Mix
The Finance and Investment Committee reviews and approves the asset mix.
Growth in Waterloo's Endowment
Book and Market values of the endowment for 2023/24
Book Value $469.1M
Market Value $557.6M
Endowment Fund Returns
The endowment fund total return for the year ending April 30, 2024, was 9.19% and the annualized total return for the 10 years ending April 30, 2024, was 6.67%.
The total return includes both realized returns (interest, dividends, market value gains/losses earned through investment transactions) and unrealized returns (market value increases/decreases in existing investment holdings.)
Asset Managers
- Fiera Capital Corporation
- Phillips Hager & North Investment Services (a division of RBC Global Asset Management)
- TD Asset Management
- University of Waterloo
- Walter Scott & Partners Ltd. (a division of BNY Mellon Investment Management)
How funds are allocated and preserved
The amount of investment income allocated for spending is based on an expendable rate, set annually at the start of each fiscal year. The expendable rate considers consistency in practice, spending needs and anticipated endowment realized investment returns. The expendable rate for 2023/24 was 3% of the endowment’s 12-month, weighted average book value. The expendable rate for the current year, ending April 30, 2025, is currently set at 3%.
Waterloo endeavours to annually increase the principal balance of each endowment for inflation, based on Bank of Canada inflation measures (CPI increase). Realized investment income amounts earned in excess of the expendable rate and CPI increase are allocated to an endowment’s reserve account. If sufficient realized income is not earned throughout the year to fund spending at the set expendable rate and the CPI increase, the endowment’s reserve account can be used to fund spending and/or the CPI increase.
For more information about endowment management and spending policy at the University of Waterloo please visit our Endowment FAQs web page.
Endowed Funds Make a Difference
Lighting a Path for New Researchers
Mathematician Andrew Wiles once compared studying mathematics to stumbling through the rooms in a darkened mansion.
“Finally … you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly it’s all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then, you enter the next dark room…”
It’s a quote that Maria Esipova (BMath ’23) loves because it reflects her explorations in math at the University of Waterloo.
The decision to come to Waterloo was easy because it’s one of the best schools to study math in North America.
It was rewarding to share something that I am so interested in, especially with younger kids.
Unearthing Excitement for Science
Asia Maheu laughs when she remembers young visitors’ squeals of excitement on entering the University of Waterloo’s Earth Sciences Museum.
“They see the T. Rex skull and the Albertosaurus skeleton and they freak out,” said the fourth-year geology student.
It’s an excitement that Maheu shares. Growing up, she also loved dinosaurs and has fond memories of collecting fossils with her dad. But it wasn’t until Maheu arrived at Waterloo that she discovered Earth Sciences, a program that would allow her to pursue her passion.
