Deb and Bob Rosenberg

Bob and I first learned how to give from watching our parents donate to church and other causes. In my family, it was expected that we give time and money to things that our church was doing.

I found out just how much money my parents gave from doing their tax returns in high school. When I got my first job, my dad decided that I should learn how to do tax returns. I did my own taxes, and then he had me help with their returns. I was stunned at how much they gave. Even when I had my first job out of college, they gave away more than I made. Still today, they donate all of their Social Security benefits, every month. Thankfully, they can afford to do that.

When Bob and I got married, we put these lessons of giving into practice. We made a list of places we would consider giving to. We received mail from so many organizations; it would have been easy to give to a million different charities. We had to sit down and decide: What are our priorities? We chose a few organizations that we felt passionate about and then gave larger gifts that would have more of an impact.

One thing that helped with our giving was to set up a donor-advised fund. We were fortunate that one place where I had worked early on allowed me to buy stock. The company has done really well, so we took that appreciated stock and set up the donor-advised fund. This has allowed us to do things like a Heritage Scholarship at Gustavus, which we set up out of this fund.

Gustavus came back into the picture for us when our daughter went to school there. She graduated in 2014. I had graduated in 1979, and my dad was a member of the Class of 1954. I had been a bit disconnected, but then we rediscovered the College while driving down to St. Peter to see our daughter. I got involved with Gustavus Women in Leadership, the mentoring program, and the alumni board.

When it was time for my 40th reunion, I was asked to be on the planning committee. A Class of 1979 scholarship fund had been started a few years earlier, but it was not very big. We all looked at each other and decided that our class had to plant a stake in the ground and make something of this fund. A lot of us were near the end of our careers, so we were able to commit to a scholarship. We also wanted to engage more of our classmates with the College so that they would see what was happening at Gustavus.

Bob and I also made a planned gift to Gustavus at that time. The kids were grown and out of the house, so we decided to revisit our will. We were intentional about putting charitable gifts in our estate. We have been fortunate, and our kids don’t need all of our money. We wanted to make sure there was something going to organizations we care about, Gustavus included.

We feel very fortunate that we are able to give, especially this year. We haven’t had a hiccup in terms of earnings, and our expenses have gone down. Given the circumstances of these past months, we are happy to continue living out the lessons we learned when we were younger.