Dartmouth College, a member of the Ivy League, had an 8.3 percent endowment investment return in the year ended June 30, bringing the size of the fund to $4.7 billion.
Real estate and venture capital were the primary contributors to the performance, Pamela Peedin, the college’s chief investment officer, said in a statement Thursday. Venture capital alone generated a return of more than 30 percent, she said. Natural resources and emerging markets were poorer performers, said Peedin, the former investment chief at Boston University who joined Dartmouth in 2011.
For the 10 years ended June 30, the school said it had an annual average return of 8.8 percent.
Dartmouth, based in Hanover, New Hampshire, beat the only other Ivy League school that has reported returns so far this year. Harvard University, which has a $37.6 billion endowment, posted a 5.8 percent gain for fiscal 2015. Including other elite schools, Bowdoin College has the top return at 14.4 percent, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 13.2 percent.
The median return for endowments and foundations with more than $500 million this year is 3.6 percent, according to an estimate by Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.
“An 8.3 percent return for the fiscal year 2015, given the investment landscape during this time period, is a strong result for Dartmouth,” Richard Kimball, chairman of Dartmouth’s investment committee, said in the statement. Kimball is the founding general partner of Technology Crossover Ventures, a private equity firm in Palo Alto.
Dartmouth counts on the endowment to cover more than 20 percent of the college’s operating budget.