What’s the difference between a gift and an endowment? >Gifts are donations of money, tangible items, volunteer time or other valuable resources that can be us

What’s the difference between a gift and an endowment? >Gifts are donations of money, tangible items, volunteer time or other valuable resources that can be used immediately to support the mission of University of Missouri Extension in the short run (one or two years). >Endowments are a long-term funding strategy whose proceeds are designated to be used for a specific purpose. The money put into this fund — the corpus — will be part of the fund forever in order to earn interest and grow. An MU Extension endowment account is a pending endowment until the fund balance reaches $2,500. At that time, paperwork is done to make the endowment permanent and distributions to county spendable funds begin. Distributions are generally made monthly once an endowment becomes permanent. The larger the corpus, the larger the distributions it can generate — distributions that will continue forever. Larry isn't giving them a fund to work with and grow, he's literally throwing $200 million at them.