Scholar, educator, ethicist, preacher, activist, and musician. Richard (“Dick”) Unsworth (ThM ’63) is a man of many facets. As a student, teacher, and administrator, he has been affiliated with many institutions of great distinction: Princeton, Yale, Dickinson, Smith, Dartmouth and Harvard Divinity School among others.

In 1997, Dick Unsworth received HDS’s Rabbi Martin Katzenstein Award, given by the Alumni/ae Association to a graduate who exhibits “passionate and helpful interest in the lives of other people, an informed and realistic faithfulness, an embodiment of the idea that love is not so much a way of feeling as a way of acting, and a reliable sense of humor.” In 1998, Dick and his wife, Joy, made a planned gift to HDS because says Dick, “Harvard Divinity School was my formation. You go back to the places that fed you and made you.”

“Making a planned gift to HDS was a no-brainer,” adds Unsworth. “It’s a payback of what you really do owe. It’s a very good way to use money to everyone’s advantage, and to pay back in spades what you’ve been given.” Unsworth points out that he has not amassed significant wealth during a lifetime in ministry, and he is eager to debunk the myth that planned giving is only for the very wealthy. The planned giving vehicle he and Joy chose pays them an annuity, making their gift “a very good investment.”

For those who have thought—but remain skittish—about planned giving, Dick Unsworth borrows a famous advertising phrase: “Just do it!”

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