Evergreen College Endowment Assumptions: Income from the capital campaign is distributed uniformly over the 7 years of the campaign Endowment returns...

Simulation

Evergreen College holds an endowment currently worth $700 million.  The Chief Investment Officer of the endowment has hired you to predict the performance of the endowment over the next 10 years. You are given a deterministic spreadsheet for this purpose, Evergreen.xls. The spreadsheet incorporates the following elements (you can assume that the spreadsheet is correct):

• Annual growth in the endowment due to financial investments;
• Contributions from a capital campaign;
• An annual draw on the endowment for ongoing activities, where the size of the draw incorporates percentages of the previous year's draw and the current endowment;
• The cost, over 2 years, of a new science building. Spending and construction of the new building is conditional on meeting targets in the endowment and the capital campaign.

To improve the model you want to incorporate some measure of uncertainty. You have selected the following probability distributions:

• Annual rate of return: Each year's rate of return is lognormal with a mean of 8% and a standard deviation of 2%. Each year's rate is independent of all other years. 
• Total collected in capital campaign: triangular with a minimum of $100 million, most likely value of $300 million, and maximum of $450 million. 
• Length of the capital campaign: The campaign could last 6, 7 or 8 years, with these probabilities:

Length of Campaign (years)                      Probability