Issue date: 1/27/06 Section: News

Media Credit: courtesy Future Investors

As the Future Investors approach their third anniversary this spring, they have expanded their presence to three other Arkansas colleges and are uniting students across the state to learn to spend and save and become savvy investors.

Since its creation, the organization has received non-profit status, formed a board of advisors composed of fifteen local business people, and perhaps most notably, has set up chapters at the University of Arkansas, University of Central Arkansas, and University of Arkansas Little Rock. Future Investors Creator and President, senior Eric Bell, said he founded the organization after discovering that Hendrix did not offer any courses on personal finance.

"Colleges do not require students to take personal finance classes," Bell said. "So once we graduate and get jobs and have financial obligations to meet, we are not prepared to manage this important task responsibly."

To remedy this situation, Bell founded the Future Investors with a $6,000 dollar grant from the Hendrix Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. Future Investors is now a subsidiary of the Center. Bell says he uses the word subsidiary lightly, because their relationship is similar to the ones that all student organizations have with the College. Becoming part of the Center allowed all money raised by the organization to become tax-exempt under IRS code.

"The startup money was used for a multitude of activities," according to Bell. "It helped us establish the nonprofit, develop our website, www.myfutureinvestors.org, and buy educational games, software, and etc.," Bell said.

Future Investors created the Future Investors University, a program that is used by each college chapter. The FIU offers several ways for students to learn how to manage money.

Each chapter puts on a six-part series of speeches at their college each semester. The speeches, given by financial professionals, cover a wide range of topics that concern college students. In addition, every two weeks the organization brings in a personal finance professional or educator to speak with students about any questions they might have about their finances. The goal is to ready students for when they are out of college and making financial decision on their own.

Among the skills the group tries to instill in students are ways to manage their finances and budgets, how to save and spend, and how to manage debt effectively. The end goal is to help students become knowledgeable enough to create a sound financial future and to be in the position to invest.

"In addition to our lectures and workshops, students participating in Future Investors University will have the opportunity to compete against other Future Investors chapters each spring in our annual Future Investors Stock Market Challenge," Bell said.

In the Stock Market Challenge, each chapter competes to create the best portfolio out of a theoretical $100,000. It will begin on Feb. 13th and last for ten weeks. In addition to the four chapters of Future Investors, three other colleges in Arkansas will be competing, according to Bell.

College students are not the only future investors that the organization wants to teach. They are still sorting the details with other local organizations, but they are in the works of creating the Future Investors Academy, which will be directed at students in kindergarten through twelfth grade.

"I want our generation to give back what they have learned," Bell said. "The earlier we can teach students, the better."

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