The Trump administration has threatened to cut $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard University. However, the university had $53.2 billion of investment assets in its endowment as of June 30. That’s 27% higher than 2020’s $41.9 billion.
Notably, the university has certain spending restrictions on most endowment funds because donors often mandate what their gifts support.
Most of the endowment’s assets, 38.6%, were allocated to private equity. That was followed by hedge funds at 31.7%. Traditional assets (equity, fixed income and cash) totaled 21.9% of assets.
Distributions from the endowment were the university’s largest source of revenue, accounting for 37% of its latest fiscal year’s revenue. Sponsored support was 16%, which includes 11 percentage points from federal government grants.
Endowment distributions make up varying portions of each individual school’s revenue. These range from the T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s 20% to Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s 85%.
