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Endowment

Menlo’s Endowment supports the people that make this school what it is: teachers, coaches, and students.

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What is an Endowment?

The endowment is a permanent source of income that provides the resources to support current programs as well as big, bold new initiatives.

A strong endowment helps advance Menlo’s mission and ensures the future health and well-being of the School. Menlo’s endowment consists of the cumulative donations from decades of generous parents, alumni, and friends. These donations are invested in perpetuity and grow through careful stewardship by the Board of Trustees. The endowment’s principal is not meant to be used directly; rather, it pays out a percentage each year to be used for various priorities such as financial aid, academic programs, and faculty and coach support. Menlo’s endowment truly benefits every person in our community and helps maintain long-term financial stability.

“Our endowment ensures that our core strength, things like our commitment to financial assistance, flexibility, and innovation, will always be funded regardless of the larger macro-economic conditions of the world. In short, Menlo’s endowment ensures that the Menlo we know today will be here tomorrow.”

—Head of School Than Healy

Why Endowment is Important

Endowment is about investing in our people and our program. 

The commitment to address all of Menlo’s priorities—providing transformative academic experiences, supporting employee excellence and compensation, and ensuring access and affordability, and maintaining our facilities—is moderated by the reality that the financial requirements are great. To continue Menlo’s excellence in academics, arts, and athletics, and to ensure that we are preparing our students for the world that they will inherit, it’s essential that we bolster our endowment now to ensure we have critical funding to fulfill these priorities today as well as to help build a secure future for future generations.

What does the Endowment Support?

Academic Program

  • Create a relevant, distinctive, and innovative academic program that teaches 21st-century skills and content to prepare and differentiate Menlo students for success in college and life
  • Incorporate global perspectives, embrace interdisciplinary studies, and provide a foundation for global citizenship
  • Support new ideas and initiatives: this is Menlo’s Research and Development Program

Faculty Development and Compensation

  • Attract, retain, and develop exceptional faculty and staff who engage, mentor, and inspire students, which is especially challenging when we are competing on a national and global scale for the best teachers and coaches
  • Provide professional development opportunities, such as conferences, training, learning best practices from other institutions, and funding for graduate school
  • Offer enhancements to compensation, enabling us to reward excellence
  • Provide a competitive benefits package, including affordable housing, given the rising cost of living in the Bay Area

Student Financial Aid

  • Ensure that all families receive aid if they identify that money is a barrier to a Menlo education
  • Allocate aid for specific programs (e.g. travel) so that every student will have the opportunity to experience and benefit from all aspects of Menlo, regardless of financial resources
  • Enhance academic support programs so that every student has the opportunity to succeed and thrive at Menlo

What does a robust endowment do
for our community?

  • Ensure a continually engaging and relevant academic program
  • Recruit, develop and retain excellent faculty, coaches, and staff
  • Provide professional development opportunities for faculty and staff
  • Strengthen our financial aid program
  • Serve as a resource pool for innovation and planning
  • Enable us to hold more of the reins on the finances of the School
  • Provide a steady source of revenue, enabling the School to weather economic fluctuations

For more information contact Director of Development Casey Wynn.

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Focusing on Menlo’s Future

Endowment is our promise to future generations that the core of who and what Menlo is will not change.

Crucial to Menlo’s success over the next 100 years is a focus on developing distinctive, relevant, and innovative educational experiences; recruiting, retaining, and developing exceptional faculty; and ensuring accessibility and affordability, with the goal of preparing our students for success in college and beyond.

A stronger investment in people and programs is needed to align Menlo with other nationally-ranked peer schools, as well as to keep up with local peers. But more importantly, a strong endowment would mean Menlo can avoid relying more on tuition increases to fund its various operating expenses, such as faculty salaries. With the cost of living in the Bay Area putting ever more pressure on our teachers and families, we are committed to keeping our tuition increases to a reasonable level. Planning for the long-term financial health of the School by growing our endowment is the best way to fulfill this commitment.

Furthermore, the Centennial Scholars Initiative is a new pillar of Menlo’s commitment to financial aid. Led by alumni Rey Banatao ’91 and Michael Uytengsu ’85 and current parent Aarti Chandna, Centennial Scholars was created as a fund in which substantive gifts from alumni, parents, and friends of the School could be invested with the School’s endowment in perpetuity, its annual payout supporting the financial needs of a select number of student scholars.

Through this program, we’ll be giving low-income families full financial support and the kind of mentorship and counseling these talented students need to succeed at Menlo, in college, and beyond. We need to make a commitment to these students that if they believe in themselves, we will believe in them and give them the support they need—not just financially, but through frameworks and mentorship designed to help them succeed. The more we invest in helping the neediest at our school, the more our entire student body benefits.

We are poised to meet these challenges and are excited to focus on ensuring Menlo’s core strengths will always be funded, no matter the larger macro-economic conditions of the world.

How Menlo’s endowment compares to peer institutions, nationally

How Menlo’s endowment compares to peer institutions in the Bay Area

If you have any questions about the Menlo Centennial Campaign, contact Vidya Kagan at vkagan@menloschool.org or 650.330.2001 ext. 2555.