NEWPORT — With donations doled out to local organizations and investment savvy gained, a project undertaken by Salve Regina University students paid dividends beyond the classroom.
A student-managed investment fund yielded hearty earnings, and the students in Samuel Sacco’s Investment Planning class opted to donate some of the funds to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center and Boys & Girls Clubs of Newport County over the holiday season.
“I learned that if the opportunity exists to give back to the community it is important to utilize that opportunity and make it great,” said Tori Bickel, a senior studying business administration with an economics minor.
Bickel participated in the project, which also benefited Boston Children’s Hospital and Year Up Rhode Island, a nonprofit that supports young adults in the professional sphere.
A total of $15,000 was donated and divided among the four organizations. The MLK Center received $5,600 to fund Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for families in need. Another $4,400 went to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newport County to fund under-pressure after-school programs for children. And $4,000 went to specific funds at Boston Children’s Hospital and $1,000 to Year Up Rhode Island.
Sacco, in an email to The Daily News, said the original investment planning idea originated from two students in 2015, who requested Sacco lead a once-weekly workshop on stocks. The effort started with $1,000 that was donated from Salve departments for the students to invest, which was used to establish an investment account with Morgan Stanley.
“We originally bought two stocks, 6 shares of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCL) and 10 shares of Yahoo (YHOO),” Sacco said.
The success of that 2015 workshop spurred the Investment Planning course, a highly-popular course at Salve.
“Through today, after the $15,000 donation was deducted in [December], our portfolio value is $64.3K with overall portfolio returns of 175{de3fc13d4eb210e6ea91a63b91641ad51ecf4a1f1306988bf846a537e7024eeb},” Sacco said.
“When we returned to school for the Fall 2020 semester, we spoke about the challenges of the past several months due to the pandemic,” Sacco added. “I remarked that much of what families needed for economic and personal stability were the types of initiatives that Salve’s Mercy Mission stands for and we could consider advancing the distribution of some funds given the gravity of the situation.”
Sacco noted that when he no longer teaches the Investment Planning course, the funds will be liquidated, with all proceeds to benefit charitable causes.
“I reminded them that the fund is student-managed and it is their decision, not mine,” Sacco wrote. “The students jumped on the idea and took it from there to use our portfolio earnings to help others in need.”
Samantha Dolan, a financial management major who graduated from Salve in December, expounded on her involvement in the project.
“Mr. Sacco’s proposal to us at the beginning of the semester immediately showed us what a kind and caring person he is,” Dolan said in an email to The Daily News. “He developed the stock portfolio with his classes over the years with the goal of eventually donating the funds in the future but saw that now would be a good time to donate a portion of the earnings. He taught us that investing in the stock market is more than just for retirement purposes and we saw first-hand how the class’s investments grew and how the earnings were able to help people.”
“I learned that through careful research us students can make informed decisions on what stocks to invest in and when the right time is to invest,” Dylan Carabia, a senior majoring in financial management with a minor in business administration, and captain of the men’s ice hockey team, said in an email.
“When our class was brainstorming organizations that would receive some of this money all I could think about was the Boys and Girls Club of Newport,” Carabia added. “I have volunteered at the club a few times since I began my journey at Salve helping with the canned food drive. To see first-hand the impact that this club has on the community is amazing and I know that they can always use a helping hand which is why I advocated for them. Another reason I advocated for the Boys and Girls Club of Newport was because I wanted to help our direct community especially during these trying times battling COVID.”
“I feel like I have front row seat for a successful long-running play,” Sacco said of his students. “I get to watch fine young men and women develop financial awareness and grow into admirable young adults every semester when the curtain goes up.”
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