Endowment Fund
A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are often structured so that the inflation-adjusted principal or "corpus" value is kept intact, while a portion of the fund can be (and in some cases must be) spent each year, utilizing a prudent spending policy. Endowments are often governed and managed either as a nonprofit corporation, a charitable foundation, or a private foundation that, while serving a good cause, might not qualify as a public charity. In some jurisdictions, it is common for endowed funds to be established as a trust independent of the organizations and the causes the endowment is meant to serve. Institutions that commonly manage endowments include academic institutions (e.g., colleges, universities, and private schools); cultural institutions (e.g., museums, libraries, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Financial Instrument
Financial instruments are monetary contracts between parties. They can be created, traded, modified and settled. They can be cash (currency), evidence of an ownership interest in an entity or a contractual right to receive or deliver in the form of currency (forex); debt ( bonds, loans); equity (shares); or derivatives (options, futures, forwards). International Accounting Standards IAS 32 and 39 define a financial instrument as "any contract that gives rise to a financial asset of one entity and a financial liability or equity instrument of another entity". Financial instruments may be categorized by " asset class" depending on whether they are equity-based (reflecting ownership of the issuing entity) or debt-based (reflecting a loan the investor has made to the issuing entity). If the instrument is debt it can be further categorized into short-term (less than one year) or long-term. Foreign exchange instruments and transactions are neither debt- nor equity-based and bel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported as of 2020 to be the second largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $49.8 billion in assets. On his 43rd birthday, Bill Gates gave the foundation $1 billion. The primary stated goals of the foundation are to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S. Key individuals of the foundation include Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Warren Buffett, chief executive officer Mark Suzman, and Michael Larson. The BMGF had an endowment of approximately $50 billion . The scale of the foundation and the way it seeks to apply business techniques to giving makes it one of the leaders in venture ph ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Latin: áːɾkus̠ auɾέːli.us̠ antɔ́ːni.us̠ English: ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors (a term coined some 13 centuries later by Niccolò Machiavelli), and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161. Marcus Aurelius was born during the reign of Hadrian to the emperor's nephew, the praetor Marcus Annius Verus, and the heiress Domitia Calvilla. His father died when he was three, and his mother and grandfather raised him. After Hadrian's adoptive son, Aelius Caesar, died in 138, the emperor adopted Marcus's uncle Antoninus Pius as his new heir. In turn, Antoninus adopted Marcus and Lucius, the son of Aelius. Hadrian died that year, and Antoninus became emperor. Now heir to the thron ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, Epistemology, knowledge, Ethics, values, Philosophy of mind, mind, and Philosophy of language, language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methodology, Philosophical methods include Socratic questioning, questioning, Socratic method, critical discussion, dialectic, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a ''philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." "natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Isaac Newton, Newton's 1687 ''Phil ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve (happiness, ): one flourishes by living an ethical life. The Stoics identified the path to with a life spent practicing the cardinal virtues and living in accordance with nature. The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things, such as health, wealth, and pleasure, are not good or called in themselves ('' adiaphora'') but have value as "material for virtue to act upon". Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to virtue ethics. The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and they believed people should ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Emperor
An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother ( empress dowager), or a woman who rules in her own right and name ( empress regnant). Emperors are generally recognized to be of the highest monarchic honor and rank, surpassing kings. In Europe, the title of Emperor has been used since the Middle Ages, considered in those times equal or almost equal in dignity to that of Pope due to the latter's position as visible head of the Church and spiritual leader of the Catholic part of Western Europe. The Emperor of Japan is the only currently reigning monarch whose title is translated into English as "Emperor". Both emperors and kings are monarchs or sovereigns, but both emperor and empress are considered the higher monarchical titles. In as much as there is a strict definition of emperor, it i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Endowed Chair
A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of Financial instrument, financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to Donor intent, the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are often structured so that the inflation-adjusted principal (finance), principal or "corpus" value is kept intact, while a portion of the fund can be (and in some cases must be) spent each year, utilizing a prudent spending policy. Endowments are often governed and managed either as a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit corporation, a Foundation (nonprofit), charitable foundation, or a private foundation that, while serving a good cause, might not qualify as a public charity. In some jurisdictions, it is common for endowed funds to be established as a trust (law), trust independent of the organizations and the causes the endowment is meant to serve. Institutions that commonly manage endowments include academi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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L'Image Et Le Pouvoir - Buste Cuirassé De Marc Aurèle Agé - 3
''The Image'' (or in French "L'Image") is a classic 1956 sadomasochistic erotic novel, written by Catherine Robbe-Grillet and published under the pseudonym of Jean de Berg by éditions de Minuit in 1956. It was made into a 1975 film, '' The Image'', also known as ''The Punishment of Anne''. Appraisals Edmund White considered the novel "scandalous but eloquent...metaphysical". Susan Sontag placed the text among the very few (5) erotic novels she considered to have serious artistic weight. Theme ''The Image'' is centred on a triangular relationship between the male narrator and two women, Anne and Claire. The narrator is puzzled by the meaning of their behavior throughout, gradually accumulating clues which only make full sense in the closing chapter, when Anne is revealed as the mirror image of the woman he actually loves, Claire.Susan Sontag, 'The Pornographic Imagination', in Georges Bataille, ''Story of the Eye'' (2001) p. 109-10 See also References 1956 n ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cy-près Doctrine
The cy-près doctrine ( ; Law French, , modern French: ''si près'' or ''aussi près'') is a legal doctrine which allows a court to amend a legal document to enforce it "as near as possible" to the original intent of the instrument, in situations where it becomes impossible, impracticable, or illegal to enforce it under its original terms. The doctrine first arose in the English courts of equity, originating in the law of charitable trusts, but it has since been applied in the context of class action settlements in the United States. An example of the doctrine's application is found in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case ''Jackson v. Phillips'', where the testator, Francis Jackson, created a trust to be used to "create a public sentiment that will put an end to negro slavery in this country". Four years after Jackson's death, slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment, nullifying the express purpose of the trust. Some of Jackson's family members attempted t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Endowment Invasion
Endowment invasion is when an institution draws on its financial endowment to pay off debts and cover the yearly operating expenses. In New York the practice requires approval from the state attorney general’s office and the New York State Supreme Court. By 2009 most states had adopted Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, a law which allows "invading principal". It is considered a last resort for any institution to stave off closure. Examples * From 2003 to 2009 New York City Opera drew down their endowment from $57 million to $16 million to pay off debts and cover annual operating expenses. * In the 1980s the New-York Historical Society began using money from their endowment to pay their annual operating costs and cover their salaries to the point where by 1988 they had only enough money in their endowment to pay for another 18 months of operating expenses. See also * Deaccessioning Deaccessioning is the process by which a work of art or other object is p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |