Harvard Endowment Achieves Smaller Returns

Officials who run Harvard University’s endowment said Friday that the fund had earned an 8.6 percent return for the fiscal year that ended June 30, significantly less than the previous year’s 23-percent return, reports The New York Times.

Despite the smaller return, the endowment grew to $36.9-billion, up from $34.9-billion in the previous fiscal year. Harvard officials said that the endowment outperformed its internal goals, with many of its emerging-market holdings and private-equities holdings outperforming their benchmarks by about 3 percent.

Harvard also exceeded its goals for domestic, foreign, and inflation-indexed bonds. Other assets such as liquid commodities, timber and land, and real estate also beat the benchmarks by nearly 3 percent.

See how Harvard’s endowment compares with those of other nonprofit institutions in The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s recent report on endowment holdings at some of the county’s largest organizations.

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