IITs, IIMs , NITs and all technical institutes which are run by the central government will now get individual endowment funds. The Ministry of HoD has given approval to the policy under which all the centrally funded technical institutes (CFTI) will create the fund. An endowment fund is a common concept in many western universities but this concept was launched in India only in the last year with IIT Delhi . This CFTI Endowment fund will have donations from industry, alumni and philanthropists.
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As per the HRD Ministry guidelines laid down for the CFTI Endowment Fund initiative, each institute will have its own separate bank account for depositing the money. Fund donations will be received under various heads such as infrastructure development, scholarship, the establishment of chairs etc. The guidelines also state that the fund will be governed by a board and the board will have the authority to take up all the major decisions related to expenses. The board will be chaired by the institute’s director and other members will be prominent alumni donors and professors.
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The structure of the fund and how it will be spent has also been clearly outlined. According to the guidelines, each institute will have an aspirational value fixed to the amount of corpus fund, which will be mobilised according to the alumni strength and average salary for each campus, and also philanthropy among other sources. For instance, IIT Delhi endowment fund began with Rs.250 crore for the corpus and looks at raising roughly 1 billion in the next six years.