Elliotts Support International Affairs Education

Lloyd Elliott showed his gentle wit at the recent announcement that he and his wife, Evelyn (‘Betty’), are going to add a substantial sum, $500,000, to their endowment in support of the Elliott School of International Affairs.

“I grew up a wealthy man in the rocky hillsides of Appalachia, so yes, it’s a lot of money for me,” quips the man who rose from humble beginnings outside Charleston, W.Va., to become president of The George Washington University, serving from 1965 to 1988.

The couple expresses their love for GW through their existing endowment of $1.2 million, which is designated to the “Elliott Fund.” The endowment’s formal title is the Evelyn E. and Lloyd H. Elliott Fund in support of the Gaston Sigur Professorship and other Elliott School activities.

The provisions of this gift “are that the income should be used as the dean and the faculty decide,” Elliott says. “One year this may support a professorship, another year something on similar lines, but maybe a graduate assistantship for a student, or a scholarship.”

Michael E. Brown, dean of the Elliott School, expressed his gratitude for the couple’s commitment.

“Lloyd and Betty Elliott have made countless contributions to The George Washington University—in a multitude of ways extending over more than four decades,” Brown says. “At the Elliott School of International Affairs—the school that proudly bears their names—we are deeply grateful for their continued involvement in our current programs and plans for the future. . . .This gift to the Elliott Fund will ensure that the school will continue to be one of the best and one of the most dynamic schools of international affairs in the world.”

As a former president who excelled at fund raising, and is perhaps proudest of finding support to establish three libraries, Elliott weighed how to set up his own endowment for GW.

“I’ve seen too many gifts to institutions become kind of hamstrung by the conditions that the donor puts on them,” Elliott notes. “And yet most donors don’t want to just give it and walk away at midnight, so that’s what we are trying to do—to designate the course of the use of the income, but leaving it in the hands of the people closest to the work—the dean and the faculty.”

—Jeannette Belliveau