Building an Empire IN PLAIN SIGHT BY DR. JAMAL WATSON
When Dr. Dwaun J. Warmack arrived at Claflin University in August 2019 as the institution's ninth president, he inherited a beloved but financially modest HBCU nestled in the heart of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a school celebrated for its rich 150-year legacy but still working to expand its footprint. The endowment stood at roughly $26.7 million. Total assets hovered near $107 million. The institution's Composite Financial Index, the metric most closely watched by accreditors and bond to mean it. And when you stack the evidence alongside the declaration, it is difficult to argue otherwise. "God has been faithful," he says, more than once, in the unhurried cadence of a man who has learned
investors to gauge institutional health, sat at negative one.
arrived at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when tuition revenue had contracted, corporate donors had grown skittish, and the financial foundations of small private institutions were being tested in ways not seen in generations. More importantly, it came without the conditions that have long made philanthropic relationships with HBCUs quietly exhausting. philanthropy," Warmack says. "She gave the way philanthropy, I believe, should be given and has been given to majority institutions for a long time. Too often, HBCUs are victims of predatory philanthropy. You get a $10,000 gift, but they expect monthly reports. You don't have a large grants staff, so you end up spending more time reporting on the gift than you do deploying it." Scott's gift, he says, was simply: here is the money, use it where it's needed most. "I think MacKenzie Scott fundamentally transformed
Five years later, the transformation is staggering.
The endowment has climbed to $82 million, more than tripling in half a decade and eclipsing what the institution had accumulated across a century and a half of existence. Total assets now exceed $280 million, a 107 percent increase. The CFI has rocketed to 12.45, a figure that places Claflin in rarefied company. For context, Yale's CFI sits at roughly 11.4. Any honest accounting of Claflin's financial ascent must begin with MacKenzie Scott. In December 2020, Scott made an unrestricted $20 million gift to the university, part of her historic wave of transformative giving to HBCUs and minority-serving institutions across the country.
For Warmack, the significance of that gift went beyond the dollar figure. It
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