Your legacy captures your values, dreams and hopes for the future, and creating it is a rewarding process. You may have a sense for what you’d like your legacy to be based on actions that you are taking today. This may include volunteering with organizations you care about, attending events at those organizations and supporting them with annual gifts.

You may also be thinking about how to extend the expression of your values into the future by creating a legacy gift. A legacy gift is usually planned during one’s life and given to charitable organizations through one’s estate. With a legacy gift to Bentley, you would express your values through the university by supporting scholarships, research, student life or another area that is meaningful to you.

How Legacy Gifts are Made

Legacy gifts are often made in conjunction with retirement and estate planning. They take time to plan and usually involve conversations with our office and your personal advisors. As a starting point, we invite you to explore this website and contact us to start a conversation.

On our website, we highlight various assets you may give, and how you can give them. Because tax considerations can shape a gift plan, we note those that may be pertinent for you to consider. We also offer a web tool so you can explore your gift options as well as several helpful resources to assist you as you gather information.

There are many combinations of areas to support at Bentley, types of assets to give and ways to give those assets. We’re here to listen carefully to your thoughts on the impact that you would like to have at Bentley, and evaluate your particular situation to help you find the gift option that fits best with your financial and philanthropic goals.

Summary

Overall, the legacy gift planning process generally consists of these steps:

• Gather information from us and your advisors
• Discuss that information with us and your advisors
• Document your gift in your estate plan and with Bentley

After your gift plan is in place, we invite you to join the 1917 Legacy Society, a growing group of alumni and friends, some of whom have shared their stories here. We thank you for your consideration, and look forward to partnering with you on your journey to create your legacy at Bentley.