Does the donor have some right that his donations be used as advertised? Could a donor sue because a charity squandered the money by spending it hookers and blow? Does poor investment stewardship resulting in the charity having 20% less money damage the donor differently from wasting 20% of the money? I’m not a lawyer, but morally I think the university is in the clear as long as their waste or arguably poor stewardship was reasonable. Did they knowingly make bad choices (especially if some kind of personal benefit/self-dealing was involved) or through an honest effort come to a different conclusion than the donor preferred?

Subjectively, I get the impression that the lawsuit is performative and the donor is trying to pressure the endowment to engage in a more modern textbook passive investment strategy. I don’t blame him - I feel the wealth management industry acts as a parasite in many cases. This case sounds like a common arrangement for a university endowment, though, so I feel it would be hard to defeat with a lawsuit. But I bet the suit gets the university a bit of a break on those fees.

It seems he’s seeking class-action status and looking to define the class as all students who have attended the school in the last decade. It sounds like he’s alleging that because endowment returns were “too low” and because active management fees paid to third party investment advisers were “too high” the students have been harmed in the form of higher tuition.