As this article goes to press, the Blair endowment is just about to reach $50 million, a height it has never before achieved and certainly a moment to be appreciated. Over the last three years, in spite of weakened economic markets, Blair has followed prudent investment and spending guidelines, and the endowment has remained in positive territory, recently enjoying a strong rise, coinciding with the improving economy and surging markets. Still, although we are one the oldest of American boarding schools, Blair has a relatively small endowment.

Small? At $50 million? Well, in a word, yes. In fact, in terms of per-pupil-endowment (a measure which puts everyone on an equal basis), Blair is in the bottom quarter of the top 40 boarding schools in the country, many younger than Blair, but most with significantly greater resources. Alumni and friends of Blair, obviously proud of the school’s reputation and history, may puzzle over the fact that similar but younger schools have grown their endowments in order to provide scholarships, support faculty and new facilities, while Blair seems to have come very late to the party. And of course, with a smaller endowment, we were able to capture only some of the remarkable endowment growth that occurred in the 1990s. Why is this the case? What is the real story behind the Blair endowment?

First, a little about how an endowment works. Unlike the annual budget, which takes the entirety of tuition, Blair Fund gifts, and other revenue sources that pay the annual expenses of operating the school, an endowment is a separately invested body of money. Much like a family’s savings account, it is used both as security against a catastrophic event and as a growth fund, the interest from which helps the school with both annual and capital needs. Of course, a major capital campaign – such as Blair’s Sesquicentennial Campaign in l998 – can significantly increase a school’s resources. Essentially, the endowment is the “human face” of the school. It provides funds to support the faculty and scholarships for deserving students while, at the same time, helping the school to hold down tuition costs.

Throughout Blair’s history, its limited endowment has forced the school to make hard choices, including the prospect in the mid-1970s of actually merging the school with a junior college. Though that did not happen, why did Blair even consider such a thing? Because at the time we had a small endowment, a deteriorating enrollment picture, and no clear prospects for improvement. The school’s Trustees bravely sided with Blair’s future, but it was not an easy choice.

We must, then, ask the question again: why if other boarding schools—many younger than Blair—have robust endowments has Blair not followed suit? Much of the explanation of Blair’s endowment history lies in our distant past, not in the most recent period of solid growth and thoughtful management. And the reasons have much to do with not only where Blair was founded (far from everywhere) but also with why Blair was founded (because there was no local school available). In other words, Blair was begun for practical, not visionary, reasons, and that practicality governed our early years. Below are a few key factors that have affected Blair’s endowment size:

• Consider that, whereas most of the prestigious New England schools were begun by a single founder with a clear educational vision, Blair was founded by a local committee of church elders, primarily interested in having the convenience and continuity of a school rather than having to hire itinerant scholars every year.
• Further, other 19th century boarding schools often had the strong and sustained financial backing of a founder who also served as an active and aggressive recruiter. Blair had nothing like sustained financial support, much less an endowment. Our students, both boys and girls (a fact in itself unique), were generally of modest means, many the sons and daughters of Presbyterian ministers in the area.
• In its early history, Blair experienced transitory leadership with headmasters who lasted a few years and then moved on. When John C. Sharpe, took the helm in 1898, beginning his nearly 30-year tenure, Blair had had nine headmasters in its first fifty years.
• While the leadership of other boarding schools was eventually transferred to a board of trustees following the passing of a single founder, Blair continued to be governed primarily by the Presbytery of Newton, which saw the school as an extended function of its ministry. The alumni had very little involvement in Blair’s governance, not gaining a seat on the Board of Trustees – which consisted mostly of ministers – until the 1920s. Improvements and progress eventually did come, at first gradually but accelerating under Dr. Sharpe, a visionary headmaster, who donated much of his own money to Blair. (Indeed, Dr. Sharpe himself paid for and built, among other things, our famous arch and Sharpe House.)
• Unfortunately, and perhaps critically, Blair did not raise money during strong economic periods in the 20th century – that is until the last 20 years. While other schools grew during times of prosperity – particularly during the post World War II period through the 1960s – Blair struggled with leadership both with its headmasters (there were three in the 1950s) and with a Board of Trustees comprised largely of ministers who did not have the means themselves to support Blair and for whom fund-raising was not a priority. The Presbyterian relationship, so central to the founding of Blair Academy, lost its clear purpose in the 20th century as public education became universal and governing a boarding school seemed increasingly superfluous.
• In fact, no potential benefactor would make a substantial gift to the school during this period, in part because of an unspoken concern that the Church, rather than the school itself, would retain control of Blair’s endowment and resources.
• Finally and happily for the endowment, during the 1980s Blair’s Trustees increasingly became the domain of alumni and parents committed to a larger vision for the school’s future. As time went on, it became clear both to Blair and the Presbyterian Church that a different governance structure would serve both well. Thus, in 1995 a new covenant relationship was established between Blair and The Presbytery of Newton, assuring the Board of Trustees full ownership of the school. While Blair remains committed to its Presbyterian roots and heritage (three ministers remain on the Board), Blair’s trustees are now solely responsible for the school’s well-being and financial growth.

The reasons for Blair’s relatively modest endowment may now be clearer, but how then does Blair catch up – is such a thing possible? It is beguiling to look at The Peddie School’s $100 million gift from Walter Annenberg in 1993 and, say, “If only we had such a ‘transforming gift.’” But such philanthropy is the exception, not the norm. Rather, endowment growth occurs most often from relatively small (less than a million dollars) but outright gifts to the school or from bequests that come in an unrestricted manner. And fortunately, Blair has been blessed in recent years by extraordinarily generous gifts from its Trustees and from lesser-known but equally loyal alumni such as Andrew Lewis ’36, who recently left Blair a $2 million bequest in his will. Whereas parents and alumni do much to fuel the success of our annual fund – called “The Blair Fund” – it is those alumni and friends who make significant capital gifts to the school or leave Blair money in their estates who will perhaps most influence the future growth of our endowment. While Blair may have had a bit of a slow start, we are surely making great strides forward as we soon cross the threshold of a $50 million endowment.

The heart of the Blair experience has been and should always be in the strength of the community, a community defined by the educational bond between the devoted faculty and the willing and aspiring student body. Endowment size should never be the barometer for the heart of a school and is not at Blair. Yet a healthy and secure endowment underscores and protects the spirit and mission of any school, and Blair is no exception. Thanks to inspired and generous alumni and friends, Blair is enjoying perhaps its strongest and most robust period of stability in its history and certainly deserves a growing endowment to reflect and sustain that progress.

 A Brief History of Blair’s Endowment