photo by: Nick Krug

KU Endowment, at 1891 Constant Ave., is shown in this Journal-World file photo from Nov. 23, 2016.

The man whose proposal calls for a multimillion dollar increase in funding from the KU Endowment Association left a meeting with university leaders on Wednesday less hopeful that his plan would be accepted.

KU’s Faculty Senate president, Kirk McClure, said the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of KU Endowment increasing its annual support to the university.

Currently, KU Endowment provides $185 million annually in support. However, McClure would like Endowment to find a means to refinance the Integrated Science Building in the Central District of the KU campus. McClure said he went into the meeting with Chancellor Douglas Girod, interim Provost Carl Lejuez, KU Endowment President Dale Seuferling and others thinking that there was at least tacit support for the idea.

“That tacit support was cut off,” McClure said.

McClure said that the interim provost said early on in the meeting that he wasn’t sure how the proposal could be feasibly implemented.

For his part, Lejuez stopped short of calling the proposal dead when he talked with the Journal-World after the meeting. He said he appreciated how McClure and others were trying to come up with ideas to lessen the impact of a proposed $20 million budget cut at the Lawrence campus.

“Specific to his proposals, I think our actions show we are taking it seriously. At the same time, it is important to be honest about our progress, just as we have been throughout this process,” Lejuez said.

After the meeting, Seuferling told the Journal-World that one important fact to remember about KU Endowment funds is that very few donors give unrestricted funds to the university.

“This determines how KU Endowment distributes funds to the university. Less than one percent of donor contributions are received on an unrestricted basis and those funds are already committed to KU priorities,” Seuferling said in an email.

If Endowment absorbed the cost of the Integrated Science Building, it would amount to about a 4 percent increase in its contributions to the university, McClure said. He believes that would be better than having faculty and staff absorb the 6 percent cut out of the budget at KU’s Lawrence campus this year.

McClure said he understood that Endowment did not have large amounts of unencumbered funds to work with. Instead, he said he was suggesting that Endowment search for creative ways to change its investment strategy and take other actions to make a 3 percent increase in annual giving to the university.

Budget managers across the university continue to evaluate ways to cut their budgets by approximately 6 percent.