The University of North Carolina athletic department made some money off a 2018 investment, and now it’s cashing it in.
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The UNC Board of Trustees voted on Wednesday to approve a transfer of $9 million from a quasi-endowment fund to the athletic department, which will be used to “to help recognize payments that would have been available in FY27, and then also address operational expenses in athletics,” UNC vice chancellor for Finance and Operations and chief financial officer Nathan Knuffman said.
Knuffman shared that the source of the funds was from a previous investment of an advance payment of $8 million from Nike that “otherwise would have been received by the university in 2027 and 2028,” Knuffman said. It was required to withdraw $4 million from the initial Nike funds in both 2027 and 2028. But the athletic department invested the money as a “quasi-endowment fund,” which grew to $14.2 million as of June 2026, allowing the athletic department to withdraw and additional $5 million to address operational funds.
A “quasi-endowment fund,” Knuffman explained, refers to “an internally-designated fund set aside for endowment rates of return.”
“Those dollars would have been part of the athletics budget anyway, so they’re pulling those forward,” Knuffman said. “By investing those earlier, we were able to grow those dollars available to us. And it also helps us close some of that gap — as you know, there’s some challenges across the power four (conferences).”
Budget, finance and infrastructure committee chair Jim Blaine applauded the athletic department for “the foresight of the folks that took this strategy,” which he added is “what we need to be doing.” Blaine then moved to approve the item, which was seconded by trustee Rob Bryan.
Trustee Ritch Allison used time after the motion to again commend the athletic department for its use of the initial funds received from Nike, which it was due in 2027 and 2028 but was awarded early, in 2018. But athletic spending has been a hot topic of late among the UNC System. Citing rising athletics costs across its 15 member institutions, the System’s Board of Governors’ budget committee commenced discussions last Wednesday regarding potential policies to regulate how institutional funds are funneled into athletics as spending increases.
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Those discussions, which board member John Fraley said at the Sept. 16 meeting he expected to be a months-long conversation among the Board of Governors, centered around the lack of policy which allows unrestricted institutional funds to be used to subsidize athletics spending. The fear was that could have a negative impact on academics. While there was little resistance from the committee, discussion on Wednesday centered mainly around the terminology used in the request.
“Do we have to call it the ‘quasi-endowment funding?’” trustee Ramsey White asked.
Knuffman said the term “generally applies” to the funds set aside for those purposes. He added that discussion of a quasi-endowment funds are “not a frequent item in front of the board,” with the last time being in 2020 in regards to a $4,000 quasi-endowment for the School of Pharmacy.
“It’s not a frequent withdrawal,” Knuffman said. “We don’t have a lot of those, typically.”
Trustee Vinay B. Patel urged that the previous investment should have been more-prominently featured when the request was made public.
“I would just urge, as we put this information out, that if there’s a true investment made and this is taking a prorated return from there, let’s have that be the story,” Patel said. “I know (the media is) not going to report it that way, but at least we put it out in the right way.”
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This story was originally published September 23, 2026 at 11:20 AM.