William Abraham from Wells Fargo Advisors in Memphis provided information on the Coahoma Community College endowment fund during their February board meeting and reported 2020 was a positive year in spite of the COVID pandemic.
“The year last year was a roller coaster ride as we all know in the things we have experienced and things we have learned,” Abraham said. “The markets, they fell victim just like we all did not knowing what was going to happen.”
Abraham said, normally, the course with an investment plan remains as it was. He provided a review of investments in the endowment fund since 2001.
As of now, he said the fund has $3,598,460.
“We’re trying to grow the money, which you’ll see has happened over time, but it does fluctuate with the market,” Abraham said.
Since the fund’s inception, Abraham said there has been a negative $427,000 net investment taking in about $2.9 million and paying out about $3.3 million.
Abraham said the fund is averaging 7.94 percent a year on returns. He said the returns were ahead 18.3 percent from last year.
“After all the ups and downs, we had a positive year in the market,” Abraham said. “A positive year for health and the pandemic? No, but in the market, we had a good year.”
Abraham also provided a list of funds monies are with listing of investments, percentages and how everything is laid out.
“We’ve been pretty steady for the year,” Abraham said.
Abraham said recommendations on how to invest would come from the board, but he does believe 2021 will be a better year from an economic standpoint. However, he said the risk is everything is still shut down.
“Nobody knows what the market’s going to do,” Abraham said. “If somebody tells you they know, you need to start running the other way.”
Abraham said he does know how handle things when they do on the market and people are able to manage money as they see fit at the time.
CCC president Dr. Valmadge Towner said the majority of board members were not serving when the endowment fund began and explained the intent.
“The initial expressed purpose of the money was to help students,” Towner said. “With that being the case, the board has selected over the years to do a number of things, which ultimately help students such as some funds from this endowment were used to acquire this building (Vivian M. Presley Administration Building) and so forth.”
Towner said there is not a development office where CCC is able to go out and secure funds annually, but he is working on that.
“We need to get to that point because right now the endowment is just simply growing on its own,” Towner said. “We’re not putting anything into it.”
Towner said the board should be doing something through the endowment fund every year to help students. He believes that would help market CCC and enable the school to secure other funds.
