This paper explores issues concerning endowment building, endowment management, and the general perceptions of endowment through the views of leaders of nonprofits that built an endowment. We find that endowment is generally considered meaningful to nonprofit leaders when it provides at least 5% of an organization's annual budget. The initiative for building endowment largely comes from boards of directors, executive directors, or some combination of both. However, external actors—especially foundations—play critical roles. The source of funds for endowments mostly come from major gifts including bequests, even though these gifts often were not solicited. Endowments serve a range of functions for organizations and do seem to alter organizational behavior and outcomes as suggested by the existing literature. Endowment aids organizational sustainability by supporting some reasonable level of annual operating costs. Many nonprofits use the flexibility and freeing up of resources provided by endowment funds for innovation, program enhancement, capacity building, and risk taking. For better or worse, endowments become a key part of a virtuous cycle of legitimacy where the nonprofits' accomplishments, relationships, and reputation attract resources to support activities in perpetuity, thus creating a more capable, stable, and accomplished organization to which additional support is more easily drawn.

中文翻译：

---

非营利组织的捐赠建设和使用：理论与实践的结合


本文通过建立捐赠基金的非营利组织领导人的观点，探讨了有关捐赠基金建设、捐赠基金管理以及对捐赠基金的普遍看法的问题。我们发现，当捐赠至少占组织年度预算的 5% 时，捐赠通常被认为对非营利组织领导者有意义。建立捐赠基金的倡议主要来自董事会、执行董事或两者的某种组合。然而，外部参与者——尤其是基金会——发挥着关键作用。捐赠资金的来源主要来自包括遗赠在内的重大捐赠，尽管这些捐赠往往不是主动索取的。正如现有文献所表明的那样，捐赠为组织提供了一系列功能，并且似乎确实改变了组织行为和结果。捐赠通过支持一定合理水平的年度运营成本来帮助组织的可持续性。许多非营利组织利用捐赠基金提供的灵活性和释放资源来进行创新、项目强化、能力建设和风险承担。无论好坏，捐赠都成为合法性良性循环的关键部分，非营利组织的成就、关系和声誉吸引资源来永久支持活动，从而创建一个更有能力、更稳定、更有成就的组织，并获得额外的支持。更容易绘制。