Endowment

The cochairs of the silver anniversary campaign of the Jenkins Arboretum in Devon recently announced they were moving into the public phase of raising a $3 million endowment. James T. Carson of Newtown Square and Roger M. Whiteman of Wayne worked with the arboretum board of directors to raise $1.5 million of the goal. The endowment will support the arboretum, which features several habitats for native wildlife. The arboretum receives 37 percent of its income from membership dues, spokeswoman Rhonda Poe said.

These are blissful times for college endowment funds. With stock market averages reaching new highs seemingly weekly and the bond market romping to impressive gains, the financial fortunes - and, in turn, the academic resources - of many universities and colleges have improved vastly in recent years. "Endowment funds can make the difference between the good schools and very, very good schools," said G. Richard Wynn, vice president of finance of Haverford College. "There's only so much you can do with prices and the number of students.

In Tredyffrin Township, which has seen more than one recent struggle over open space, it might have been easy to overlook the Jenkins Arboretum - 46 quiet acres of azaleas, mountain laurel and white oak nestled between housing developments. But in low-profile, informal meetings, township officials decided to purchase the arboretum from the Elisabeth Phillippe Jenkins Foundation for more than $1 million. Not only will the arrangement give Tredyffrin ownership of the undeveloped tract off Devon State Road, it will inject much-needed cash into the arboretum's $650,000 endowment.

In Round One of the American Federation of Musicians' effort to show that some of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association's endowment is not restricted by donor wishes, the association failed to produce documentation for 12 percent of gifts in the endowment. In a letter to the judge in the association's Chapter 11 case, the union's national pension fund says the first cache the orchestra provided shows 476 documents, 57 of which were images that said "documentation has not been found.

Planned Parenthood of Chester County has launched a $3 million fund-raising campaign, the largest in the agency's 32-year history. Central to the effort is establishing a $1.9 million endowment fund that agency officials said they viewed as essential to financial independence and to preventing cuts in programs and services in a county that projects a 30 percent increase in population by 2020. Part of the $3 million also will be used for new and upgraded facilities. Although the effort was publicly announced at a news conference at the West Chester health center yesterday, the agency's "Commitment Campaign" quietly got under way six months ago, said Frances Sheehan, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Chester County.

No one is more surprised than Bernadette Baraldi that she is giving talks in churches and auditoriums, calling up people she has never met and strolling into neighborhood businesses unannounced to raise money for the St. Anastasia School Endowment Fund. "I have done things I never thought I could do," Baraldi said. "I'm afraid to speak in front of a group, but I've done it. And I particularly hate asking people for money. " But she has done it, and in the nearly two years since she got the idea to set up the endowment fund for the school in Newtown Square, she and her group of helpers have raised $362,000.

A business group has pledged $4 million in matching grants to help seven urban Catholic schools create endowments during the 2010-11 academic year. Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools (BLOCS) on Thursday announced that it had signed partnership agreements with the schools as it launches its urban endowment initiative. The pilot program advances an approach to helping financially strapped urban parish schools that BLOCS officials have been discussing for the last few years.

The Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation has given $1 million to establish an endowed professorship in Rowan University's department of radio, television and film, officials announced yesterday. Michael Donovan, a professor at Rowan for 30 years who helped the university make contact with the foundation, was named the first recipient of the honor. The endowment will ultimately be used to bring in radio, television and film specialists to Rowan as visiting professors, President Donald Farish said.

The University of Pennsylvania is expecting a 15.7 percent drop in its endowment return for fiscal 2009, but is well on its way to meeting cost-cutting goals and has charted its second-highest fund-raising year ever, president Amy Gutmann said yesterday in an e-mail to the Penn community. Penn officials declined to say what the endowment was as of June 30, pending the completion of its financial-statement audit. It was $6.2 billion last June. The expected 15.7 percent drop was less than university officials had anticipated, said executive vice president Craig Carnaroli.

Protecting a natural resource such as the Wissahickon Creek does not come cheap, say members of the nonprofit group formed to preserve it. And with encroaching development endangering the waterway, the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association is seeking the public's help in raising $2.6 million to do the job. The money will go toward a capital endowment, the association's first since it was founded in 1957. The goal is to maintain and improve the 64-square-mile watershed, which includes 12 municipalities and extends from Philadelphia to Lansdale.