In many schools, finding a club that suits your interests may already be hard enough. Now if your interests happen to be relatively modern, meaning they only gained publicity in the last year or so, it is almost virtually impossible. While scouting for clubs to join throughout the school year my friend Bryan Song and I noticed the same things. First, there were not many financial related clubs, and the one Finance club there was, did not feel the need to dive into any modern topics. These modern topics I am referring to range from NFT’s to Impact Investing. After some time we realized that sitting around and waiting for a club to open up revolving our interests will most likely not happen anytime soon, so we took matters into our own hands.
Investing With A Purpose, will be a student run club that specializes in making the world a better place, in many different ways. Rather than the traditional donation drives and spreading awareness that many student run clubs do about topics like ongoing wars, people drastically affected by the pandemic, and many more, we envisioned a different approach. Our board at Investing With a Purpose envisions a future where people are able to receive significant profitable returns, while supporting whatever issues they choose at the same time. Even though some people are already taking advantage of this, the majority of the 20 students who said they would be interested in joining this club had no idea this was possible.
Our board understands that many students who have no prior financial knowledge will also be interested in joining this club, which is why we have developed a plan to ease into our curriculum. Our first week will consist of educating students on what exactly impact investing is. This will include showing famous videos like Kevin Peterson’s Ted Talk, which touch on the benefits but also some possible risks of Impact Investing. After this first week of informational videos and articles, we will assign a questionnaire via google forms, that will make their understanding on the topic clear to our board. Based on this difference in skill level, we will generate groups, as evenly as possible, that will be given tasks throughout the next couple of months. One of the biggest projects students will be assigned with, is an investment competition with a twist. The companies that students will be investing in will come from “Investor’s Business Daily” Top 100 Esg Ratings list. In this competition students will be allowed to pick 5 companies to invest in however they please, this includes calls, puts, or simply just investing. In order to fulfill the social finance part of this club, we will also require students to write a brief paragraph on why they decided to invest in each company. Also, in order to make some type of change in their portfolio students will need to receive a majority vote decision from the members in their group.
As the opening day of Investing With A Purpose comes closer, I as President of the club will be sure to update you on possible changes in the club’s curriculum. Any feedback on ways to improve the club will be greatly appreciated.