Invest Better in Colgate
Why This Matters in 60 Seconds
Endowments provide the lifeblood of universities - funding scholarships, faculty, and programs. The larger the endowment, the more attractive a university is to prospective students and faculty (all things equal). Colgate’s endowment growth has lagged that of peers for a decade.
-
The vast majority of endowment growth comes from investing, not fundraising.
-
Wesleyan, similar size and mission, had a smaller endowment than Colgate’s ten years ago. Today it’s $300 million larger due to better investing.
-
You need only look 20 miles down the road from Colgate for another example: Hamilton College also had a smaller endowment a decade ago. Today their endowment is $150 million larger, and with 1,100 fewer students, is able to offer need-blind admissions and supports 53% of its students with need-based aid, against Colgate’s 35%.
-
This wasn’t luck: Wesleyan and Hamilton, like other well-performing peers, professionalized their endowment management years ago. Colgate relies on volunteer board members.
-
I’ve highlighted many examples below of professionalized peers that have grown their endowments more than Colgate through superior investing.
-
Colgate says its underperformance is the price of conservative management. But the values of two-thirds of Colgate’s investments are estimated rather than set by the market, and estimated values move more slowly, and less dramatically, than market prices. That makes the portfolio look safer than it is.
-
Please add your name to the PETITION, asking Colgate to do what most of our peers have done: professionalize Colgate’s investment office.
My name is Mark Sommer, Class of '82. I spent 27 years at Fidelity Investments, 22 years managing funds. I have been raising concerns with Colgate regarding its poor endowment reporting and management for years. I’m happy to report progress on the transparency side: Colgate published endowment performance on its website in October 2026, for the first time since 2021. (The above video was created prior to October.) It’s also the first time ever that Colgate included a comparison versus an appropriate peer group - endowments greater than $1 billion. Colgate is middle-of-the-pack (median) against these peers over the last 10 years ending FY2026.
I think we can do much better. That comparison group spans every institution with more than $1 billion, including large research universities. Against the liberal arts colleges Colgate actually competes with for students, like Wesleyan and Hamilton College, it still lags the majority. Both had smaller endowments than Colgate 10 years ago. They are now $300 million and $150 million ahead, respectively, due to superior investment performance, not fundraising. This translates into more funding for scholarships and programs. Here are some other schools that have overtaken Colgate:
Colgate claims its lagging performance is due to conservative management. That case rests on a single measure, volatility: how much its reported values swing from year to year. Two-thirds of the endowment is in private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and real assets, whose values are estimated, in Colgate’s own words, “in the absence of readily determinable market prices." That artificially lowers reported volatility, according to Colgate’s own data source. Meanwhile a simple, low-cost index of stocks and bonds would have grown the endowment more over the decade, with daily liquidity and a fraction of the fees. Nobody expects Colgate to index. But a strategy that costs this much more should beat it, and Colgate’s hasn’t come close.
Why is Colgate losing ground to peers? I believe it’s because most of its peers have established professional investment offices or have outsourced the Chief Investment Officer role, while Colgate has a part-time CIO (also chief finance officer) and is managed by an anonymous volunteer Board committee, according to its website.
Wesleyan, by contrast, hired Anne Martin from Yale’s investment office, a pioneer in endowment management, in 2010. She was recently succeeded by her deputy, Jonathan Farrar, who joined Wesleyan’s investment office in 2014 from Highmount Capital, where he managed external manager selection. Their performance and transparency are a model for Colgate. Hamilton College hired Anne Dinneen, an experienced endowment professional, in 2015 and her successor, Lauren Jacobson, in 2022 from Columbia University’s investment office. Hamilton put its investment office in New York City, to be closer to investment talent. Both these schools are on their second generation of experienced leaders.
Schools like Mount Holyoke and Colorado College have closed their endowment gaps with Colgate since professionalizing, with each now having a higher endowment per student than Colgate. The top performers are overwhelmingly schools that sought professional management.
Wesleyan shows what's possible when endowment management is done right: its ten-member professional investment team publishes a comprehensive annual letter detailing performance, including sub‑asset class returns, and publicly names its investment committee. They discuss their investment philosophy, strategy and values (e.g., socially responsible investment policy). This is what professional endowment management looks like: performance, values, transparency.
About nine percent of Colgate’s long-term investments, $128 million in 2025, are managed by firms in which trustees or their family members have a financial interest. Colgate says these investments comply with its conflict-of-interest policy. Colgate doesn’t say whether a trustee with a financial interest steps out of the decision to hire or keep the firm. Hamilton and Bowdoin state in their audited financial statements that a trustee with a financial interest may not take part in such decisions. Oberlin states on its endowment governance page that its endowment is not invested with such firms at all, avoiding even potential conflicts. Colgate could adopt either standard going forward, and show the performance of these investments, after fees, annually and over the past decade.
Please join me in calling for better endowment management, disclosure, and governance by signing the PETITION below. Colgate's Third Century Campaign alone is unlikely to close the growing endowment gaps with peers.
PATHS FORWARD
Most peers have moved away from the part-time CIO and volunteer investment committee management model. Many did this years ago, citing the complexity of markets. They understood the time commitment and expertise required. Here are three paths they took, each with real examples:
Build a professional in-house team. As Wesleyan did in 2010. The record of full-time teams led by skilled endowment managers is remarkable: all but one Yale Investment Office-trained professional profiled by the New York Times in 2016 who took the helm of a peer school's endowment went on to produce top-quartile ten-year performance. (Andrew Golden at Princeton fell just short.) Brown took a different route - a leader from outside the Yale tradition, an excellent team built from scratch - and now ranks near the top. The common factor isn’t pedigree or location (Amherst’s team is in Boston, Hamilton's is in NYC). It’s full-time, well-trained people who answer for the results.
Hire a professional outside firm. Colorado College did exactly this, converting from the committee-and-consultant structure Colgate still uses to a discretionary outsourced CIO. Middlebury has used a consortium CIO model since 2005. Firms like TIFF, Cambridge Associates, Partners Capital and Investure do this for universities that don't want their own teams. Performance varies, among firms and even among teams within a firm, so selection matters as much as the decision to outsource. But the option is real, and the better teams have strong long-term records.
Match the market at low cost. A diversified, low-cost portfolio built for a long horizon is a legitimate choice for any institution that prioritizes simplicity, liquidity, and cost. Over the past decade this approach would have beaten most endowments.
Whichever path, the governance gets written down
Colorado College’s approach, again, is instructive: it publishes its investment policy statement, including a table setting out who does what. The outside advisor selects managers and rebalances the portfolio, while the Investment Committee selects the advisor and approves the policy. It also names its policy benchmark down to the individual funds, every one of them something you could actually buy, which is not true of most endowment policy benchmarks. That is likely what an experienced CIO brings.
Writing down who does what is not a resource question. Colorado College made the decision to write the rules down, publish and follow them.
Each path looks different, but all require the same thing: professional management, transparency for stakeholders, a clear division of duties, and the governance to change course when necessary. Colgate could take any of them.
WHY I AM ASKING FOR YOUR SUPPORT
I have raised my concerns with the CIO and the Board
I now believe only our collective voice can persuade Colgate to improve endowment practices
No matter how much you've given in the past, helping to improve endowment management could be the biggest financial impact you will ever have on Colgate
Petition
Colgate should put its endowment in the hands of full-time investment professionals, accountable for published results, as most of its peers have.
WE ARE PETITIONING FOR
-
A full-time professional CIO. One person accountable for the endowment, in-house or outsourced, with no competing university role.
-
Annual published results. Against a $1 billion-plus peer group and the policy benchmark, over 1, 3, 5, and 10 years.
-
A published investment policy. Stating who decides what, including who hires and terminates investment managers.
Please add your name.
In October 2026 Colgate published returns against a $1 billion-plus peer group for the first time. That is real progress. But one year’s disclosure is not yet a practice, and this petition asks for changes that would make it one.