When you create an endowed fund with a planned gift to benefit Texas A&M University, you enter into a partnership with the Texas A&M Foundation intended to last in perpetuity. The goal is to preserve the principal of your gift while increasing charitable distributions each year.
The graph shown here illustrates the power of an endowed fund created through a planned gift by the late Minnie Van Hook to honor her late husband, Raymond Van Hook (Class of 1921), an electrical engineering graduate. After her passing in 1984, the Foundation received $71,574 from her estate to create the Raymond Van Hook Memorial Scholarship. Today, the endowment has a market value of $186,451 and currently provides scholarships to eight Aggie electrical engineering students. Since its creation, the total payout that has benefitted students from this endowment amounts to more than $173,200*.
Creating an endowment is easy, and you can specify whether you’d like your gift to fund scholarships, advance faculty endeavors, enhance student programs or fund new facilities at Texas A&M. You can also decide how to name your fund—in your name, in honor of a loved one, or after your favorite professor, for example. Whatever you choose to support will create an everlasting and powerful legacy, given the long-term nature of endowments’ financial impact.
The Power of Endowed Funds
Electrical engineering student Razan Ghabin ’20 is one of the hardworking Aggies who benefits from the Van Hook Memorial Scholarship.
“This scholarship has had a profound impact on my experience at Texas A&M,” said Ghabin. “It has strengthened my determination to help others and change the world through my field of study. They say a drop produces a ripple; this scholarship will likewise have an ever-growing impact on society as it supports individuals like myself who want to become engineers and inspire others to work together to achieve a brighter future.”
