In estate planning, ask: “Where can my gifts make the biggest difference?”

Tom Roddenbery ’76 and his wife, Janice, are perhaps a bit more aware about philanthropy through estate planning than most couples, because they are both members of the fundraising profession. Tom is a development executive at Princeton University and Janice is a fundraising consultant specializing in capital campaigns for social service and educational institutions. Yet the couple began their estate planning process together by asking two very basic questions: “What are the institutions that have had the most impact on our lives?” and “Where can our gifts make the biggest difference?”

Tom and his wife have no children, so it was especially important for their estate plans to specify the distribution of their assets clearly. Because Tom and Janice have spent most of their careers in education, it is not surprising that educational institutions figure prominently in their planning. Tom believes that gifts to independent secondary schools such as Worcester Academy can often make a proportionately bigger difference or achieve a “bigger bang for the buck” for a donor than making a similar gift to a richly endowed college or university.

Tom came to Worcester Academy from Holden and found his Academy experience to be a transformative one on several levels. “The Academy changed me. A great deal was expected of students academically and personally. Just being around a group of peers who aspired to high academic goals pushed me to achieve,” he explains. Tom also gained a great deal from the diverse student body at Worcester Academy and was extremely well prepared for the academic challenges at Vassar College after graduation from WA.

Worcester Academy, Tom believes, continues to define itself as a unique and distinctive institution that prepares students for college and beyond. He is proud to have been a loyal and generous annual fund donor to WA for over 20 years, saying that “just because you’ve made a planned gift to WA doesn’t mean you stop giving to the Annual Fund!” Tom is confident that his estate gift will make a difference for the Academy and its students in the future.