Morehead State University Foundation

Morehead State University Foundation

The Morehead State University Foundation incorporated in 1979 as a tax-exempt Kentucky non-profit to channel private gifts to the university. The foundation sits alongside the university's advancement office, with leadership roles historically split between a board chair — currently Perry Price Allen — and executives such as Allison Caudill and Rick Hesterberg, who each hold the CEO title while managing overlapping advancement responsibilities. The endowment allocates across a wide strategy set that includes venture, buyout, distressed debt, mezzanine, and fund-of-funds commitments, though the foundation also holds direct assets atypical for a small university pool. Its real estate footprint includes the Edwin Reid Farm in Owingsville, a commercial site tied to the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music in Morehead, and a mixed-use holding in the same city. The foundation manages two art collections — the W. Paul and Lucille Caudill Little Art Collection and Chinese scroll works housed in the Golding-Yang Art Gallery — and has accepted in-kind grants such as the Siemens PLM software grant to the College of Science and Technology. A significant co-investor relationship exists with the Joseph W. Craft III Foundation, which provided a $950,000 grant in 2023. The foundation does not publicly disclose total deployment figures or headcount. It maintains no offices outside Morehead, Kentucky. In 2023, the foundation received the $950,000 grant from the Craft foundation, which reinforced its capacity for direct program funding rather than purely passive manager selection. Leadership has shown continuity through dual CEO designations, tying fundraising and investment oversight together under university advancement. The foundation’s structural differentiator is its blend of an endowment model with a quasi-operating posture: alongside traditional fund commitments, it directly owns farmland, commercial property, and fine-art collections. The investment function reports through advancement leadership rather than a standalone CIO office, an arrangement that ties fundraising outcomes more tightly to capital deployment than is typical for a freestanding endowment.