People say money isn’t everything. It’s not, but it’s right up there with oxygen. — Rita Davenport
What do chief investment officers earn at university endowments, you ask? We recruit these paragons of finance for a living and avidly track their accomplishments. In this letter we highlight the compensation of eighty-two CIOs and compare their pay to their endowment’s ten-year performance.
Our goal is to provide boards and investment executives with objective benchmarks and competitive insights as they work to attract, retain, and reward top talent.
The caveats
The IRS requires executive pay to be reported as of the calendar year ending within the organization’s fiscal year. But nonprofits are in no hurry to file these pesky public documents. They can take up to two years before reporting their finances, and most do.
And languid filings are just the half of it. The numbers are often scattered among frequently quirky databases in various jurisdictions with various disclosure rules. Sometimes the data is just not there. Some of the endowments included in our investment performance studies have, so far, only reported base salaries for their CIOs, so we don’t list them in this report.
Here’s one example. The University of Michigan does not file a separate form 990 with the IRS. The university considers the office a part of the school’s Business & Finance division and claims that as a government entity, it is not required to file form 990 under Treasury Regulation 1.6033-2(g).
Well, darn! This means we must rummage through administrative disclosures, public-records requests, business news, gossip columns, etc., to find comp info on Mr. Eric Lundberg, the university’s investment head. His base salary of $1,035,000 for CY 2024 is posted begrudgingly on the school’s executive salary website. But that’s all we find.
Yet, years ago the Chronicle of Higher Education reported his total comp as $3,420,164 for 2019 and $2,485,618 for 2021. Given the endowment’s excellent performance over Mr. Lundberg’s twenty-seven years as the university’s first and only CIO, I seriously doubt UofM whacked his pay.
School media, by the way, is another excellent source for compensation tidbits. We missed the 990 filing for Georgetown University as we assembled our CIO comp lists. But, thanks to the Georgetown Voice, we now know that Mr. Michael Barry received a base salary of $661,939 and bonus plus incentives of $1,047,554 for CY2024, his last full year as Georgetown’s CIO before moving on to Johns Hopkins University. Student reporters are badgers for truth.
Attribution:
One more thing. Our report is a snapshot not a movie. Many of the CIOs we cite have less than ten years at the helm. Moreover, a ten-year number by itself does not show the trajectory of performance or who contributed what and for how long.
During Scott Wilson’s tenure at Washington University, St. Louis (nine years and counting) the endowment has moved from fourth to top quartile to top decile, so he and his accomplished staff have delivered in spades for their school.
Others with less time on the bridge may have had to deal with legacy investment challenges. It can take years to right the ship.
The world we live in
For investors of all stripes, the last few decades have been quite a ride. A crash, recession, cheap money, new highs, then Covid, rallies, rates, and bubbles. “Double, double toil and trouble.” Some things never change.
But whatever the crises or Shakespearean struggles, CIOs are paid to make money for their schools, and somehow most do.
Our compensation review below.
—Charles Skorina
Our 2026 endowment performance report coming soon.
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We present our compensation data in two tables. The first ranks total pay highest to lowest with the endowment’s corresponding ten-year performance alongside.
The second flips the criterion and ranks by the endowment’s ten-year performance with commensurate pay alongside.
