The Endowment
Give once. Keep giving after you are gone.
A gift to the endowment is never spent. It is invested, held, and the income it earns pays for camp: this summer, and every summer after.
Hume So Cal
What an endowment is
The gift that is deliberately never spent.
Most giving is spent on purpose. A campership sends a child this summer; a building gift puts up a building. An endowment is the opposite by design. The gift itself is invested and left alone, permanently, and only what it earns is used. The principal is not a reserve to be drawn on in a hard year; it is what makes hard years survivable.
It’s a savings account; we don’t touch the principal; we invest the interest in camperships, which gives us the opportunity to keep camp affordable into the future. A campership gift sends one child. An endowed campership gift sends a child every year, for as long as the fund exists.
How it works
Three things happen to an endowment gift
It is received and set apart
The gift goes into the endowment rather than into the operating budget. It is recorded as permanently restricted, which is an accounting term that means exactly what it sounds like: it cannot be spent, including by Hume.
It is invested for the long term
Endowed funds are invested on a horizon measured in decades, not quarters, because they are never going to be liquidated. Good years and bad years are both expected; the point is the average across many of them.
Only the income is used
Each year a defined share of the fund is released to support ministry, and the rest is reinvested so the fund keeps pace with cost. The gift stays whole. The giving does not stop.
Why this gift asks more of you
A permanent gift is a judgment about the institution, not the year.
Giving to a campership asks whether Hume will run a good summer. Giving to an endowment asks whether Hume will still be here in fifty years, and still be worth funding. That is a harder question and it deserves the plain answer: Hume has been operating since 1946, has been an ECFA member since March 2011, and is audited every year by CapinCrouse LLP.
None of that guarantees the next eighty years. It is the evidence that exists, and it is what an endowment donor is entitled to weigh.
Give to the endowment
The summer that outlives you.
A gift to the endowment is invested and held. What it earns supports Hume’s ministry every year from now on.
Endowment gifts are permanently restricted and cannot be refunded or redirected once made. Hume has complete discretion and control over the use of donated funds.
There is a second way to do this.
An endowment gift can also be made through your will or estate, which is how most of them are made. Legacy giving is the same decision on a longer timeline.
Legacy givingStay connected
Updates, impact stories, and opportunities to give. No noise.
Other ways to give
Not everyone gives by card
A check in the mail, a donor advised fund, or a conversation with someone at Hume. All three reach the same place.
By mail
Make checks out to “Hume Christian Camps” and send to:
Hume Christian Camps ATTN: Development 5545 E. Hedges Fresno, CA 93727Donor advised fund
Recommend a grant to Hume through your donor advised fund. Hume is set up for online requests through several of the larger providers.
Start a DAF requestTalk to someone
Hume’s Development team can take a gift over the phone, answer a question about a fund, or help with a gift of stock or property.