Annual Funds

Northland Fund: Gifts to the Northland Fund go to faculty salaries, staff salaries, professional development, facilities, technology, everything from push pins to professors, really. By giving to the Northland Fund, or where the need is greatest, you are ensuring the College has the flexibility to place resources where they are needed and maintain excellence in every department and program across campus.

You can also direct your gift to the operating needs within the academic or athletic department of your choice.

Allison Mills '11
Geoscience
Sustainability Fellow at Northland
Gives to: Bjorn Norgaard Scholarship

Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute:Northland is unique in that it has the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. The environmental outreach branch of the college provides students with hands on real world experiences in conservation and sustainability while providing needed services throughout the region. Your gift to the SOEI has an impact on Northland students as well as the ecological and economic health of the North Country by helping to pay for staff salaries, office support, equipment, and educational outreach materials.

If you like loons, lakes, and citizen science, as well as opportunities for students to work on everything from environmental education to population surveys, your gift can be directed to the LoonWatch program at the SOEI.

Endowment Funds 

When a gift goes towards an endowed fund it is invested, conservatively, in the stock market, where it earns money and grows over time. A portion of the earnings, called the draw, is taken out every year.

For purposes of comparison, if you give $100 to the annual fund, it goes to the day to day expenses of running the college right away. If you give $100 to Northland's General Endowment Fund, that same $100 will generate approximately $5-$7 this year, next year, and the year after that, every year for decades and centuries to come. It will continue to grow and earn money forever.  Far in the future, when students are strapping on their jetpacks or getting into their hovercrafts to get home over break, and majoring in subjects we don't even know about yet, your gift will still be helping them receive a Northland education.

Earnings from Northland's General Endowment Fund go to general operating support. There are also a number of restricted endowed funds for specific scholarships, department chairs, or programs. You may create your own endowed fund with a major gift. Or, you can add to the principal or to the expendable portion of any endowed fund. What does that mean? The principal is the invested, never-to-be-touched account that generates income. The expendable portion, or draw, is the percentage that is drawn from the earnings (the rest of the earnings go back into the principal, so the fund will continue to grow).

Northland has over 100 named endowed scholarships. Perhaps you were the recipient of one, and you'd like to add to that fund. Or you might be interested in helping students that have a particular major or come from a specific geographic area, or you might want to honor one of the many Northland alumni, professors, and friends that have endowed scholarships bearing their name.

Annual Funds vs. Endowment Funds

If you were asked which are better, peas or carrots, what would you say? There is no right or wrong answer; it is simply a matter of preference. So is your style of giving to Northland. Every gift makes a positive impact, no matter the size, no matter the designation. There are a few things you can take into consideration, however, if you'd like. After all, you might prefer fresh peas over frozen carrots, or roasted carrots over canned peas.

Some factors you might want to mull over are: what is the current enrollment at Northland? A high number of enrolled students bring in more tuition and fees. How is the economy doing? If times are tough for students and their families, times get tough for Northland. The need for financial aid increases even as the endowed funds produce less of a draw. So, when times are lean, annual fund gifts are hugely important; when things are rosy, building up Northland's endowment for the next rainy day makes a lot of sense.

Campaigns

Every so often Northland will have a campaign. A campaign is a concerted effort to raise a large amount of money for specific projects, programs, or campus improvements. A campaign might stretch over multiple years. Oftentimes a donor or group of donors will offer a match or a challenge to drum up support. This lets you get more bang for your buck. A campaign is usually about more than general operating support. Sometimes they are focused on capital gifts, or increasing endowed funds. Capital gifts go to permanent infrastructure like buildings. The Larson-Juhl Center for Science and the Environment, for example, was built in 2000 as a result of the Strategy for Excellence Campaign of the late ‘90's and early ‘00's. Gifts made to the campaign also went to the renovation of the Dexter Library and the addition to the Van Evera Visual Arts Center, plus contributed to the construction of the MELLC and the Ponzio Campus Center. All of these improvements took place without a significant rise in tuition costs for students.