Endowment Charitable Remainder trust to Honor Donor’s Parents        

John F. Shelley AB ’65, LLB ’68 remembers opening volumes in Widener Library as an undergraduate and noting the bookplates carrying the names of alumni.

"I recall seeing those bookplates—some over a hundred years old and thinking that it was a charming way to memorialize someone." In 1987, Shelley established a book fund at Harvard, and as a result, his family’s name has been appearing inside books in the Harvard College Library ever since.

John F. Shelley and Patricia Burgess As a trust and estates lawyer, Shelley felt inclined to make a planned gift to sup- plement that book fund. Last year, he established a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) that is invested with the Harvard endowment. The trust offers him quarterly income for his and his wife’s lifetimes, and ultimately the corpus will support the John D. and Catherine H. Shelley Book Fund, honoring his parents.

"I’m always telling my clients to go ahead and do a life income gift. In the end, it may provide more money for charity, and it will give you a current tax benefit in addition to the income,"says Shelley. "It’s a different experience when you’re doing it, and it’s your money,"he says. "But I worked with Harvard to make a sensible projection of the long-term economics on the transactions. And although nobody can guarantee results, I got over my financial anxieties when I saw what our income stream may be and what Harvard may ultimately receive. It was also clear that establishing the trust was an effective means of diversifying an investment portfolio in a tax-efficient way. I thought of this as an investment for my future and my wife’s future—and, at the end of the day, a significant gift to Harvard as well."

An Iowa native who lives in Cleveland with his wife, Patricia Burgess, Shelley initially thought of establishing and investing the CRUT on his own. "Then I wondered, who is likely to produce the best investment results over the next thirty years, John Shelley or Harvard University?" In addition to the strong track record of the endowment, the tax reporting and accounting that Harvard Management Company furnishes at no fee provided further incentive to make this gift.

Most important, however, was Shelley’s commitment to giving to Harvard. "A great deal of my success and my enjoyment of life is attributable to my experience at Harvard, particularly as an undergraduate," he says. "I long felt that I should recognize that with a meaningful gift back to the College."

When Shelley initiated his book fund, he decided to enable the library to determine how to use the gift. They had a need for Scandinavian resources and have directed most of Shelley’s funds toward purchasing books from that region. Coincidentally, Shelley has some Nordic ancestry, so he was pleased.

Making the decision to establish a planned gift, in the end, turned out to be easy. "My wife and I have both wanted to make significant charitable gifts as part of our estate planning," says Shelley. Burgess has been supportive of the gift, honoring her husband’s ties to Harvard, love of books, and penchant for bookplates. Yet, as the library increases its online holdings, Shelley wonders if bookplates will be a thing of the past. Regardless, his gift will benefit generations of future students at Harvard by offering the academic resources they need.

© 2008 President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.