The Eastern Illinois University Foundation’s committees will present to the Board of Directors on the status of the endowment, scholarships and grants at the end of fiscal year 2008.

Administrators were alerted to instability in the endowment after Foundation President Tim Gover announced it had suffered at a 26 percent loss, which is a negative return of $7 million at January’s Board of Trustees meeting.

“As we heard at the last board meeting, the endowment had taken a loss,” said Jill Nilsen, vice president for external relations. “I think we’ll get an update (today) to see where the endowment sits right at this time.”

The Investment Committee will be presenting on the status of the endowment at 2 p.m. today at the Neal Welcome Center along with the other foundation committees.

The Real Estate, Finance, Scholarship and Grants, and Oversight and Outreach committees are among the others presenting recommendations to the board.

The Executive and Nominating committees will also give the board their suggestions.

“Through these committee presentations, we hope to get constructive recommendations for the entirety of the foundation,” Nilsen said.

However, focus from an administrative standpoint is largely on the endowment and how the move to riskier investments has fared. Investors led by Don Gher, chair of the Investment Committee, have made the move to higher risk equities after a period of low-risk investment that may have appeased the losses from the economic crisis over the last two years.

Information on whether these plans worked for 2008 should be released at the foundation meeting. Nilsen said that concern for how the endowment is faring is based on its effect on students because it provides most of the funds for Eastern’s in-house scholarships and grants – approximately $790,000 in scholarships and more than $1.1 million in grants in 2008.

“The foundation’s endowment is really specified to support scholarships and programs,” she said. “Almost every dollar in that endowment is targeted to a specific purpose based on the wishes of the donors that originally gave the money. And particularly for the students, changes in the endowment do have the possibility of changing financial support.”

“As we are striving to keep college affordable and acceptable to our students, we will listen carefully as to how the endowment is performing.”

Krystal Moya can be reached at 581-7942 or at ksmoya@eiu.edu.