NDSU's athletic scholarship endowment quietly goes over $70 million

Another massive growth in the athletic department, however, is not visible from University Drive and can only be accessed on a computer screen. While NDSU has been assembling an army of athletic facilities in the last decade, the athletic department’s scholarship endowment fund has quietly been going up, also.

It’s currently at $71 million.

Combined with an operational endowment of $23 million and the athletic department overall endowment is at almost $94 million. An escalating rate of progress of both funds has come in the last five years.

The hope, Larsen said, is to grow the scholarship endowment to $125 million, which would fund all 192 athletic scholarships at the university. The current $71 million comprises 196 endowments.

“Some of them are new, some have been established for years and years,” Larsen said.

NDSU has grown its endowments despite it not being a primary fundraising focus. That has been reserved for the facilities in Larsen’s tenure with the Scheels Center at Sanford Health Athletic Complex, basketball practice facility and Tharaldson Park for softball.

The SHAC alone was $50 million. The Nodak Insurance Football Performance Complex will be north of $50 million.

A renovation to the outdoor track should be completed by this fall. Renovations to soccer’s Dacotah Field will start this summer and go into next year. An indoor hitting facility at Tharaldson Park is close to being a reality.

“Once those are done, and a lot of them should be done by next summer, our facilities will be in a really good place,” Larsen said.

The focus will then turn to funding the athletic scholarship endowment. It is already believed to be the largest in the Missouri Valley Football Conference by a significant margin.

The university as a whole has been hot in the fundraising department in the last few years. Its “In Our Hands” six-year campaign raised $586 million that had an original goal of $400 million, with funds being used in a variety of ways throughout campus.

With athletics, the Team Makers booster club has funded the scholarship bill over the years, which this year was $5.5 million. If NDSU is able to endow every scholarship, Team Makers funds will be used for other areas, Larsen said.

“Then the money Team Makers generates allows us to help grow our budget and invest in other areas, so we’ll be strategic in how we use those funds moving forward,” Larsen said.

NDSU’s athletic budget this year is $25.2 million.

“I would say we’re in a pretty good place,” Larsen said of the athletic department’s financial outlook. “We balance our budget. There is always a lot of stress on external revenues every year. As costs go up, those things need to grow.”

Helping NDSU’s cause in increasing the athletic endowment is a favorable tax deduction in the state of North Dakota.

“A lot of folks know that and understand it and that’s where a lot of folks park their donations every year,” Larsen said. “There’s a good tax benefit to that.”

The goal of $125 million funding every scholarship takes into account factors like hikes in tuition and fees. Larsen said university policy calls for investing back into the principal. For instance, if an endowment made 12% in a year and the distribution is 4%, the remainder goes back into the fund.

“So there is some growth there and that in a perfect world should continue to grow to keep up with some of those rising costs,” Larsen said.