School of Business

Vision and Mission Statement

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Vision Statement

The St. Bonaventure University Students in Money Management Fund (the Fund) seeks to offer undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to participate in all aspects of portfolio management by managing a portfolio of generous donations and a portion of the St. Bonaventure University Endowment. The Fund seeks to use a portion of its returns to promote student-affiliated service projects, to be nationally recognized, and to have one million dollars under management.

Mission Statement

The financial goals of the Fund are governed by the following principles:

The primary objective of the Fund will be a balance between capital appreciation and income.
The Fund will have a recurring source of income that exceeds the rate of inflation.
Total return (i.e., income and capital gains) will be consistent with the yield of a blend of established market indices (e.g., S&P 500).
The Fund will be diversified across industries and asset classes to balance the Fund’s return objectives and risk tolerances.
The Fund will solicit new capital contributions from alumni and other donors through marketing and fundraising activities.

The following guiding educational principles will help us measure the appropriateness of our decisions:

To provide investment research and management experience for student analysts.
To successfully manage the Fund’s portfolio competently, professionally, and ethically, and to achieve or exceed expected levels of investment performance as measured by established return and risk management objectives.
To implement security selection criteria that are consistent with the Fund’s investment strategy.
To understand and utilize information and technology in developing comprehensive security valuations.
To produce original research that is used in security valuation.

The Fund has no legal income beneficiaries, but earnings will be distributed at the sole discretion of the advisory board and upon recommendation of the portfolio management team. Distributions will be made in a manner consistent with, but not limited, to:

Reinvestment in the Fund to continue building its corpus and defray annual management expenses, thus providing greater and more diverse fund management opportunities for students;
A gift to the University’s Annual Fund to educate students about the importance of annual unrestricted giving to their alma mater;
Charitable donations to support student-affiliated service projects, thus promoting the importance of service, philanthropy, and Franciscan values to future business leaders.

How SBU SIMM is Unique

A unique feature of St. Bonaventure University's SIMM is the use of income generated by the fund. Earnings from the fund will be used to:

fund a student-staffed Philanthropy Committee that will be responsible for making grants to support student-affiliated service projects (e.g., the Warming House, Canticle Farm), thereby promoting the importance of service, philanthropy, and Franciscan values among our students and future business leaders;
make a donation to the University’s Annual Fund to educate students about the importance of unrestricted annual giving to their alma mater;
defray annual management expenses and build the corpus of the fund, thus providing greater and more diverse fund management opportunities for future students.
The philanthropic use of income generated by the students' efforts is one more way in which the University seeks to integrate the personal, professional, and civic values promulgated in the School of Business and University mission statements.

The creation of SIMM transforms SBU’s approach to educating future business professionals by enabling undergraduate students to be involved in the active management of a real investment portfolio. While most students focus on portfolio management and equity analysis, other students focus on administering the other business functions an organization, such as the management, marketing and accounting responsibilities.

SIMM's holistic approach reinforces SBU’s distinctive traditional strengths: close, personal interaction with a knowledgeable, caring faculty and the proliferation of St. Bonaventure University’s core Franciscan values.