Maine does not have any colleges or universities among the 47 in the country that have endowments of $1 billion or more. But the state does have one institution – Bowdoin College in Brunswick – which hits the top 100 list, coming in at No. 96 with an endowment of $514.2 million.

According to William A. Torrey, the school’s senior vice president of planning and administration and its chief development officer, Bowdoin has added $13 million in endowments since the rankings were tabulated by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

Bowdoin’s student population is small at 1,600 undergraduates, but Torrey described how the “tremendous loyalty of the alumni body, parents of students and friends of the college” translates into an impressive endowment per student, and can produce “a good, solid increase in annualized giving,” which totaled “just north of $35 million in the past year.”

Two other factors working for Bowdoin: aggressive leadership at the top to sustain focus on successful fund-raising, and the decision four years ago to hire a professional, Paula Volent, to work with the school’s investment committee.

“I believe we’re one of the few liberal arts colleges in the country that have actually gone that route,” said Torrey, who observed that with Volent as vice president of investments “we’ve been in the top 5 percent in endowment management in the United States the past five years.”

Strong leadership from Robert Kennedy, the new president of the University of Maine, should stimulate giving to the University of Maine Foundation, said CEO Amos Orcutt. With an endowment of nearly $100.6 million, the foundation placed 321st on the NACUBO list, but showed one of the larger year-to-year increases, 21 percent.

“We tend to specialize in planned, deferred giving,” such as wills, bequests, and charitable trusts, explained Orcutt, adding the foundation has “hired people to put some emphasis on marketing and advertising” in an effort to build on what he described as strong growth over the past 10 years.

The flagship campus in a poor state, UM like “all public universities, recognizes that with fewer public dollars [for support] we’re going to have to make an effort to secure private gifts,” explained Orcutt, who pointed out “we’re slightly ahead this year to date with $8 million. Through April of last year, it was $7.5 million. It’s going in the right direction.”