The $1.8 billion University of Massachusetts Foundation topped its much-bigger peers in the annual endowment league tables with a 15.9 percent gain in 2025.
The next-best result came from the $21.1 billion University of Michigan endowment, with a 15.5 percent gain, according to a just-published report by executive recruiter Charles Skorina. Just below that was Bowdoin College’s $2.9 billion endowment, coming in at 15.3 percent.
Even with last year’s standout performance, UMass still ranks in the bottom half of its peers over ten years, with an 8.5 percent annualized gain to place 53rd. Jon Gibbons, its chief investment officer, joined the endowment in 2017.
The best ten-year performance was by Brown University, whose chief investment officer Jane Dietze joined in 2018 after running Bowdoin’s private equity investments. Brown has gained 11.4 percent annually over ten years and was up 11.9 percent last year.
Bowdoin came in second in terms of ten-year performance, gaining 11 percent annually.
After its latest fiscal year, the University of Michigan is now ranked fifth in terms of ten-year performance. It posted a 9.9 percent annualized return over that time.
The University of Michigan’s chief investment officer, Erik Lundberg, “has delivered top-quartile performance to become the 9th largest endowment from being the 17th largest at $2.5 billion in value when he joined,” according to the university’s endowment website. Lundberg has won a number of industry awards, and in 2024 he was named Endowment CIO of the Year at the Institutional Investor Allocators’ Choice awards.
Michigan is now also the second-largest endowment among the top performers. The only one bigger is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with $27.4 billion in assets. It earned 14.8 percent last year, and ranks third in terms of ten-year annualized performance at 10.7 percent.
Another endowment that has boosted its showing in recent years is Michigan State University, whose CIO Phil Zecher was profiled by II last year. Last year, MSU had the best one-year performance, but it still ranked eighth in the long-term league tables. Now it’s fourth in the ten-year ranking with a 10 percent annualized gain and a 10.7 percent gain in 2025. Zecher joined Michigan State ten years ago.
“Big moves worth millions,” said Skorina. “Who says CIOs don’t matter?”
That said, over the past ten years, endowments would have done better with an S&P500 index fund. Looking at the trailing 12 months ending June 30 — the end of the fiscal year for the endowments — the S&P 500 gained 13.65 percent annually over ten years and last year returned 15.16 percent. The top endowments did outperform a 60/40 mix of bonds and stocks, which were up only 9.01 percent annually during the past decade and 11.62 percent last year.
But some of the most prominent — and largest — endowments have faltered lately.
The Yale University endowment, run by the late David Swensen who was a pioneer in leading institutions into alternative investments like private equity and hedge funds, is one such case. Its $44.1 billion endowment gained 11.1 percent last year and 9.4 percent annualized over ten years, ranking it 17th in the long-term ranking.
Meanwhile, the $47.7 billion Stanford University endowment gained 14.3 percent last year but is up only 9.4 percent annually over the past ten years, coming in fourteenth over that period.
Notably, Harvard’s $56.9 billion endowment gained 11.9 percent last year and 8.2 percent over the ten-year period. Over that time frame, Harvard has fallen to 71st out of the 122 college endowments with more than $1 billion in assets that Skorina ranks.
