The goal for the management of endowment funds at an academic institution is to ensure that the endowment provides future students and faculty with the same level of spending resources, adjusted for inflation, as current students and faculty while also providing a stable and increasing cash flow to fund current operating budgets. In order to accomplish this, endowment funds of the University of Utah (the “University”) are invested under the total return concept of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA), whereby “net appreciation, realized and unrealized, in the fair value of the assets of an endowment fund” may be appropriated for expenditure. UPMIFA was adopted into state law under Utah Code 51-08 and it is the governing regulation for the University’s endowment funds.

In addition, endowment funds specifically serve two purposes for the University. First, endowment funds provide financial flexibility to the University by allowing the Health Science and Main Campus Senior Administrators and the Academic Deans to strategically manage their colleges and departments to ensure the University continues to achieve its mission of leadership as a research institution on a national level. Second, due to the decentralized private funding structure of the University, endowment funds play a sizeable role in funding scholarships, fellowships, and current initiatives for particular departments.