Moving Forward

President John M. Lilley has announced that Baylor University's endowment has passed the $1 billion mark for the first time. 
"Passing $1 billion is a significant achievement for Baylor," said Lilley. "It is extremely important that we both increase the amount of our endowment and wisely invest the funds that have been entrusted to us. As the endowment grows, it translates into real dollars that we can make available each year to support student scholarships and academic research."
Jonathan Hook, associate vice president and chief investment officer, said that crossing the $1 billion threshold moves Baylor into the same category with the largest university endowments. Baylor's diverse investment portfolio and attention to market fluctuations has been vital to Baylor's financial success.
"We've been able to raise the return and lower the risk at the same time," Hook said. "We have to keep our performance in context with the market in any given year, but what we try to do is be in the top quartile of all our university peers, and so far we've done that consistently for the past five years. We're going to do our best to do it again this year."
Imperative XII--achieving a $2 billion endowment--is Baylor's prestigious undertaking to sustain a strong student scholarship program, to create excellence in academic and student life programming, to provide support for key academic chairs and professorships, and to enable the other imperatives of Vision 2012 through successful fundraising, shrewd asset management and responsible stewardship. 
Baylor's endowment has risen from $672,341,000 in fiscal year 2004 to $1,018,000,000 in fiscal year 2007 (ending May 31), an increase of $345,659,000 in three years.