The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and the Walton family have formulated a plan to establish a $5 million endowment for the university’s Arkansas World Trade Center using proceeds from a $300 million gift made more than a decade ago, officials said this week.
The endowment proposal is scheduled for consideration Thursday by the University of Arkansas System’s board of trustees when it holds its regular meeting Thursday in Stuttgart.
The endowment would support the Trade Center generally, said Jennifer Holland, a spokesman for the campus’s development efforts.
“It is not restricted for a particular use,” she said Tuesday.
When the university first announced in April 2002 the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation’s pledge of $300 million, it gave a detailed breakdown covering $290 million in endowed uses for student, faculty, library and technology support, with the remaining $10 million earmarked as onetime expenses for immediate acquisitions and technology upgrades for the library.
This week, the university indicated the plans have somehow changed.
The planned Trade Center endowment and another being proposed for geosciences doctoral fellowships - a $500,000 endowment given by the same donor to the university - wouldn’t involve new gifts.
“Instead, they represent the designation of the final remaining undesignated funds” from the foundation’s $300 million gift to the university, pledged in 2002 as part of a major fundraising campaign,Holland said Monday. “These funds were set aside for future endowments and have been accruing interest over the years. … As with any redesignation of funds, the donor has been made aware and has given consent.”
The $500,000 endowment for geosciences fellowships will be used as “matching funds” in hopes of attracting other donations for that purpose, Holland said.
Ben Beaumont, spokesman for the UA System and the board of trustees, said board policy dictates that an agreement between a university and a donor to create an endowment through the University of Arkansas Foundation come before trustees. The foundation handles endowments for all participating system campuses.
“When the foundation receives a gift, the board of trustees is the one that actually has to establish an endowment,” Beaumont said. “Theoretically, the board could choose not to do so, but that’s never happened.”
That’s why the endowment changes appear on Thursday’s “unanimous consent agenda,” which allows a single vote to cover all unless trustees decide to pull an item for discussion.
The Trade Center item’s description on the agenda is cryptic.
“The University of Arkansas Foundation Inc. has adopted a resolution acknowledging acceptance of funds from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation to create an endowment for the Arkansas World Trade Center,” it reads in full. The system office had no further information, Beaumont said.
Holland didn’t respond to an e-mail Tuesday seeking further information on why and how the endowment money is being altered, or how that might affect previously endowed programs. The university’s chief spokesman, John Diamond, did not return phone calls Tuesday.
A spokesman for the foundations operated by the Walton family, Daphne Davis Moore, referred questions about the endowments to the university, as did the Trade Center’s president and chief executive officer, Dan Hendrix.
The university established the Trade Center in 2006 as a means to foster international trade, according to newspaper archives.
The Trade Center was eventually moved under the umbrella of UA-Fayetteville’s Advancement Division, which administrators discovered last year was running a multimillion dollar deficit.
Also on Thursday, the Fayetteville campus will ask trustees for a 3.5 percent increase in student tuition and mandatory fees for the coming academic year.
According to budget documents, 0.5 percent of that requested increase would cover a library fee for students. The documents don’t mention all revenue streams for the library, including whether the original endowments the Walton gift established for the libraries still exist.
The original Walton gift endowments for the library included $19 million for acquisitions for the Honors College and $4 million to endow library acquisitions for the Graduate School. In those days, endowments yielded about 5 percent annually, but in recent years endowments have tended to yield more on the order of 4 percent annually.-
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/22/2013