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April 2003

Bequests increase in campaign

Carl Doughty and his wife, Cheryl (third from left), made a bequest to honor the memory of their daughter, Debra. The Doughtys are shown here with (from left) Dr. Pam Chally, dean of the College of Health, Dr. Judy Rodriguez and Dr. Simin Vaghefi. Debra Doughty was an officer in the Nutrition Club at the College of Health.

Since the inception of the Access to Excellence capital campaign, bequests have become an increasingly popular method of funding gifts to the University.

Fifty-five bequests, totaling nearly
$6 million, have been made since the Campaign began in 1997. Three bequests are for more than $1 million, four are for more than $500,000, and another six bequests exceed $250,000. A bequest is money given to the University to be used after a donor’s death. Some of the ways to make bequests are through wills, estates or insurance policies.

“Bequests are a way for a person’s memory to live on and for them to have an impact on students in perpetuity,” said Rod Grabowski, director of Constituent Programs and Planned Giving.

An example of this is the Debra A. Doughty Memorial Fund established through a bequest by Carl and Cheryl Doughty to honor the memory of their daughter, Debra, a UNF student who died from colon cancer. The fund will provide scholarships and other support for students studying nutrition. There is a memorial stone dedicated to Debra just outside the College of Health.

Gifts made in the form of a bequest support the Access to Excellence campaign goals, one of which is faculty enrichment. UNF faculty and staff have made many of the 55 bequests generated during the course of the Campaign. Bequest amounts during the capital campaign have ranged from $100 to $1.5 million.

There are benefits to making a bequest to UNF. A gift from someone’s estate is free from federal estate taxes. This is true no matter the size of the gift. The University is able to use the full amount of the bequest. If the money was left to an individual, more than half could go to estate taxes. Making a bequest of $25,000 or more entitles a donor to name the gift in their own honor or in honor of anyone else they designate.

As the capital campaign draws to a conclusion, bequests continue to come in. Last month, a $300,000 bequest from an anonymous donor added to the more than $78 million already raised by the Campaign in the last five-and-a-half years.