Lane Hall at 2 Andrews Road in Lewiston is where many of Bates College’s leaders have offices. Steve Collins/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — Bates College is worried that its $447 million endowment just doesn’t cut it.

“Academically, we are ranked among the top 20 liberal arts colleges in the country. But financially, we’re barely top 50. That is not sustainable,” Garry Jenkins, the college president, said in a prepared statement on the college’s website.

“We need to better position ourselves financially by growing our endowment,” Jenkins said. “Right now, we’re proudly fighting above our weight class.”

To try to juice its funding level, Bates this month hired an employee-owned investment firm named Investure to help.

The Virginia-based firm, founded in 2003, says it seeks to “generate excellent, long-term investment performance” for a select group of nonprofits, including Middlebury College in Vermont and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Geoffrey Swift, Bates’ vice president for finance and administration and treasurer, said in a prepared statement that “Investure’s expertise makes them an excellent partner.”

“With Investure, we have a partner who not only shares our values but also brings the scale and sophistication necessary for our future needs,” Swift said.

A college’s endowment is basically the money and other assets donated to it over the years and held in perpetuity to provide funds to support its educational mission.

“The endowment provides a firm financial foundation for the college’s future, providing a reliable source of income to support our mission, fund program innovation, and weather economic ups and downs,” Jenkins said.

Sun Journal graph of Bates College endowment annual growth since 2010.

Bates’ endowment is considerably lower than its two Maine peers, Colby and Bowdoin colleges, and outpaced by every other New England Small College Athletic Conference institution.

“This disparity further underscores our focus on endowment growth,” Bates says on its website.

Bowdoin, which has the most money in its endowment of any Maine college, has the equivalent of $1.4 million per student socked way. Colby has the equivalent of $508,000 per student. Bates, trailing behind, has an endowment that amounts to $255,000 per student.

Connecticut College’s endowment totals slightly less per student but because it has a larger number of students overall, its endowment is $482 million, about 9% higher than Bates.

Despite what it considers a too-small endowment, Bates is ranked #26 by U.S. News and World Report’s best liberal arts colleges in America. That’s just below Colby and well above NESCAC’s Trinity and Connecticut colleges.

Bates said that its endowment “has long lagged behind many peer top liberal arts colleges for a variety of reasons.”

Bates College

Among them, it said, is that it is “a younger institution” than many and doesn’t have the “history of philanthropy that some of our NESCAC peers enjoy.

It also was “more modestly invested in the latter part of the 20th century,” Bates said, losing out on decades when a rising stock market enriched many of its peers.

Investing decisions have mattered.

Last year, for instance, Forbes said that university endowments as a whole rose more than 11% from 2023. Bates’ increase was 4%. Had it gone up at the average rate, Bates would have made an extra $25 million in that one year alone.

Swift said the investment committee of Bates’ board of trustees “will continue to have primary oversight of the college’s endowment” going forward, but Investure “will work with the college’s finance and accounting office for day-to-day operations.”

Bates’ most recent public push to raise substantially more money came in 2018 when it announced a five-year “Bates Campaign” that aimed to rake in $300 million. It wound up bringing in at least $336 million.

It isn’t certain if Bates plans a new public fundraising effort beyond its normal efforts to bring in revenue annually. But it is clear the college is aiming to fill its coffers at a faster rate in the years ahead.