Jean and Bob Gee, MBA ’61, chairman of the Stanford Investment Group, created a charitable remainder trust to benefit Stanford GSB.
Stanford GSB alumni often consider the school and their classmates to be an extended family, and some include the school, like relatives, in their financial plans. Bob Gee, MBA ’61, chairman of the Stanford Investment Group, is one of those people. After being consistent annual donors to the school for years, he and his wife, Jean, not only created a charitable remainder trust (CRT) to benefit Stanford GSB, but he also is actively encouraging his classmates to do the same.
Jean and Bob Gee, MBA ’61, created a charitable remainder trust to benefit the Stanford GSB.
“I’m lucky to have had enough to take care of myself, my wife, and my kids,” Gee says. “Now, with what I have left, I want to take care of my extended family, Stanford GSB, a place that gave me a foundation for a wonderful career and lifelong friends.”
A life income gift like a CRT allows donors to make a gift to Stanford while providing themselves or others with income for a period of time before the university is permitted to use the gift. Gee jumped at the chance to create a CRT after Stanford was exempted from tax barriers that prevented it from investing donor-established charitable trusts with the larger university endowment.
The university manages the investment of the assets, allowing donors to benefit from its investment expertise and access to a range of investment opportunities not generally available to the public. In addition, a CRT can offer significant tax advantages in the form of an immediate charitable deduction, avoidance of capital gains tax upon sale of any appreciated assets, and eventual estate tax savings.
“The ability to invest with Stanford Management Company is extremely attractive. It’s a win-win situation since my money is being expertly managed and is contributing to Stanford’s endowment,” Gee says, noting the CRT also provides an annuity for the remainder of his and his wife’s lives.
After years of asking his classmates to make annual gifts, Gee is urging them also to make planned gifts before their 50th reunion in 2011. So far, 16 classmates have joined him. Anyone who makes an estate or life income gift is eligible for membership in Stanford’s Founding Grant Society, a select group that periodically holds special events. Gee’s hope is that enough of his classmates will become members of the society so that the group’s events will serve as mini-reunions.
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