![Andrew Siebengartner
'03 excelled in the John Dewey Honors program and hopes to share his love of classical languages with the next generation of students and scholars.
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4.27.07 DICKERMANS ESTABLISH SCHOLARSHIP IN HONOR OF 50TH REUNION
"There are others like us out there," says Fred Dickerman '59. He and his wife Inge '58 hope that their gift will inspire others to consider the Individual Retirement Account (IRA) or other qualified retirement plan as a vehicle for charitable giving to the University of Vermont.
Dickerman has been a successful entrepreneur for more than thirty years, having built his business around industrial sales. "For many of my working years, the government didn't provide many avenues for the small business person to put money aside for retirement," he says. "The IRA was it, so all of my retirement savings went into IRAs."
That's a sound strategy for building retirement income. But Dickerman said viewing his IRA savings in the context of estate planning was an eye-opening experience. Funds in a retirement account can pass to a surviving spouse free of taxes upon one's death. However, withdrawals are taxed as income, and any assets in the account can be subject to estate taxes upon the death of the surviving spouse. Dickerman said he was astounded to learn that between income and estate taxes, as much of seventy-five percent of the balance remaining in a retirement account can eventually be lost to taxes after one's death.
Designating UVM as the beneficiary of an IRA preserves the full value of that asset for the University's benefit and makes good sense from an estate planning point of view. "This is a way to ensure that money is used for something worthwhile and isn't just swept up in taxes," said Dickerman at the time the couple's gift was first announced.
However, when the Pension Protection Act of 2006 was passed into law, it contained a provision for a Charitable IRA Rollover that permits taxpayers age 70½ and older to make tax-free charitable gifts during 2006 and 2007 totaling up to $100,000 per year from traditional Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) and Roth IRAs.
The Dickermans saw this as an opportunity to see their gift have an impact right away and used the Charitable IRA Rollover to establish the Dickerman Endowed Scholarship Fund in honor of their upcoming 50th UVM Reunions. Their gift will also be matched in part by funds from the Lintilhac Scholarship Challenge Fund.
Fred Dickerman says that Sarah Sprayregen of the UVM development staff "did a fantastic job" in helping to structure a gift that works to benefit his family and the University. "The whole experience really got us participating again as alumni and feeling very good about reconnecting with UVM," he says. "I hope others will consider doing as we have."