In 2025, NYU Stern professor Jim Finch pledged $10 million through a bequest for scholarships and donated $150,000 to its student investment fund

The Stern School of Business is part of New York University, and scholarships funded by donations are one of the ways the university helps students cover tuition costs. NYU Stern’s alumni news says that alumni and friends give toward scholarships for many personal reasons, and that some faculty members have also established endowed scholarships for the students they teach.One recent example is Jim Finch, who teaches the Financial Services Industry class at NYU Stern and is listed on the school’s faculty page as a clinical professor of finance. NYU Stern’s alumni profile, published on June 5, 2025, reports that Finch made a $10 million bequest and jump-started it with a $150,000 cash gift to create the James S. Finch Scholarship. His giving has two parts, a long-term commitment through his estate and immediate cash gifts.Jim Finch’s path from Credit Suisse and three years of travel to the Stern faculty In the alumni profile, Finch said he retired relatively young and traveled around the world for three years before deciding he wanted to give something back. He replaced Charlie Murphy, a former Credit Suisse colleague and Stern professor, in 2016 after Murphy retired. NYU Stern’s faculty page, however, lists his start as an adjunct professor of finance in January 2018. Finch said teaching showed him how many students had scrimped and saved to reach Stern, and that he saw no reason not to help them succeed. He added that feedback from alumni who have reached their goals still comes as a bit of a shock, because it shows him how far his experience reaches.The $10 million bequest behind the James S. Finch ScholarshipThe profile’s headline describes the bequest as funding undergraduate scholarships. Because the $10 million is a bequest, it will come through his estate in the future and is not money the school currently holds. Finch said he hopes his gifts will inspire others in the Stern community to make bequests of their own. He described the school as a “giant co-op” in which everyone is a stakeholder, and said that contributing financially benefits teachers, researchers, students and the institution itself.A separate $150,000 contribution to the Investment Analysis Group’s student fund Finch also volunteers on the advisory board of the Investment Analysis Group, an undergraduate student investment club at NYU Stern. The club manages a value-focused equity portfolio that is structured as part of NYU’s endowment. The same profile says Finch made a $150,000 immediate-use contribution to the club’s investment fund to help the students grow the portfolio.That is separate from the $150,000 cash gift that started the scholarship bequest, so the profile describes two gifts of the same size, one for each purpose. Finch said he wants the club to reach a larger scale so it can add more freshmen, and he described the sophistication and thoroughness of the students’ analyses and pitches as being as strong as anything he saw in his professional career.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.