The Million Dollar Endowment Fund

The only money that cannot be lost in a bad year.

COS has been rescued twice, once from seven years of dormancy and once from a market crash, by people who happened to care at the right moment. An endowment is how an organization stops relying on that. The principal stays invested permanently and only the income gets spent, on access.

Give to the endowment

How it works

A gift that is deliberately never spent.

An endowment gift is not consumed. It is invested permanently, and only what it earns is drawn down each year. A gift made now is still working for a child who has not been born yet.

The principal stays

Your gift is added to the fund and invested. It is not drawn on for this season’s expenses, or the next one’s.

The income is spent

Each year a portion of the investment return is released to the operating budget. It is predictable money that arrives whether or not it was a good year for fundraising.

It is spent on access

The campaign exists specifically to sustain accessibility initiatives and scholarship programs: the below-cost fees, and the aid underneath them.

Why this, and why now

Twice, this organization survived on luck.

When Dr. Hiao-Tsiun Ma retired in 1977, COS went dormant for seven years. It only returned because his daughter and a young conductor put $2,500 and eighteen students behind a shared idea in 1984. When the market crashed in 2008 and arts organizations were failing nationwide, COS survived because Yo-Yo Ma staged a private concert to raise the funds. And when the pandemic closed the doors, it took sixteen months of remote instruction before the orchestra returned to Lincoln Center in June 2022.

Every one of those recoveries depended on a particular person being willing at a particular moment. An endowment takes the luck out of it. Surviving sixty years and being built to survive the next sixty are not the same thing.

The organization’s current growth priorities are stated plainly: expanding enrollment, building endowment resources for scholarship sustainability, succession planning to preserve institutional knowledge, and recruiting new board members.

The endowment · a full rehearsal, the institution at work

The campaign

One million dollars, held permanently.

$1,000,000

The target of the Million Dollar Endowment Fund campaign, led by investment managers Lilia Clemente and the late Leo Clemente.

CAMPAIGN PROGRESS NEEDED

Donors are far less likely to join a campaign that will not show where it stands. COS needs to supply the amount committed to date, the number of donors so far, whether any lead or matching gift is in place, the campaign close date, and the minimum gift that qualifies for recognition. A progress indicator can go in this section as soon as those exist.

The board’s current Chair, Loida Nicolas Lewis, leads strategic planning for the organization’s next chapter. Past board members have included Dr. Maclyn McCarty, who co-discovered that DNA carries genetic material, and Janet Avery Fisher.

In our 50th year we hoped to start an endowment for the orchestra. Any not-for-profit needs to be able to sustain itself for another fifty years. You need an endowment so that when those moments come, a failure, or losing major support, or financial difficulty in the United States or even in the world, you have a cushion. And because you have an endowment, you are able to continue.

Loida Nicolas Lewis, Board Chair, from the COS 50th Anniversary film

How to contribute

Four ways to add to the fund.

An outright gift

Cash or appreciated securities, added to the principal immediately.

Give now

A multi-year pledge

A larger commitment paid across several years, which is how most endowment gifts of size are actually made.

PLEDGE TERMS NEEDED

A bequest

A line in a will, or a beneficiary designation on a retirement account or policy. The most common source of endowment funding anywhere.

BEQUEST LANGUAGE NEEDED

A named endowed fund

An endowed scholarship carrying a family or company name, awarded in perpetuity.

MINIMUM AND NAMING TERMS NEEDED

See the mechanics of each

Endowment gifts often involve estate and tax planning. Donors should get advice from their own professional advisor, which COS cannot provide.