"Go with your strengths, and collaborate as effectively as possible." Those were the two baseline rules that Bill Moyer, DVM, head of the Department of Large Animal Medicine & Surgery at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and Bryan Johnson, PhD, head of the Department of Animal Science in Texas A&M’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, agreed upon at the inception of the Link Equine Research Endowment. Texan Patsy Link left $8.3 million to the two programs in the mid-1990s, dictating in her will that the monies be used for equine research to improve the health and welfare of horses.

The two men decided that instead of the more traditional mode of funding individual projects, they would support programs on a recurring basis, according to their previous and assumed success and production. "We went with our strengths, and made attempts to collaborate as much as possible to increase the strengths of all involved," said Moyer. "To date, this has included other departments, colleges, and universities around the world. This approach, in our opinion, has been very successful."

"We also knew we could get quite a bit more bang for our buck because we have facilities in place to take these new resources (Link funding) and create a resource base of money and expertise," said Johnson. He further explained that the Link monies could also be used to bring in matching donations from several other research funding agencies.

The Link funds give the university a recurring source of monies, since the endowment invests the balance of the funds and allows the university to spend 5% of the total value of the endowment each year. Matching funds, if achieved, stretch the use of such dollars even further