WINOGRADS MAKE LIFETIME AND LEGACY GIFTS TO HELP ENSURE AJWS’S LONG-TERM STABILITY

When Terry Winograd, PhD, and Carol Hutner Winograd, MD, were married in 1968, they committed to donating 20% of their income to charitable causes annually. In more recent years, they’ve determined to deepen their support of a handful of social justice organizations, including American Jewish World Service. “Giving is a tradition that we both inherited from our parents,” Terry says. “My father had this motto: Give until it feels good.”

To ensure that their support continues beyond their lifetimes, the Winograds have also designated AJWS as a beneficiary of their retirement fund. “Many people don’t realize that when you name a charity like AJWS as a beneficiary of your IRA or other retirement account, it will receive the entire gift outright—free of taxes on the gain,” Terry says. “It’s a socially good way to donate significant resources without it being a major hit to your transfer of wealth,” Carol adds.

The significance of giving

The couple first encountered AJWS two decades ago when they attended a reception at a friend’s home, where they met then CEO Ruth Messinger. “I was so impressed by everything she was saying,” Carol says. “I just thought she was really visionary. The model that AJWS uses is so empowering. They support people, not projects. They don’t just drop in for a three-year project then say goodbye. AJWS really sticks with people until they are functioning successfully on their own. That’s something that has always impressed me.” As a result of Ruth’s influence, the couple started supporting AJWS through multi-year grants.

The Winograds have visited AJWS’s grantee partners in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Thailand and India. Each trip, they say, was incredibly impactful. “When we went to India, AJWS had organized a huge gathering and we quickly realized that the main point of this gathering was to bring local leaders from different groups together,” Terry says. “AJWS was promoting this network so that various groups could talk to each other and learn from each other.”

Carol adds, “AJWS lives and breathes Jewish values and tikkun olam (repairing the world). They bring Jewish values in practical ways to other parts of the world.” Through the years, supporting an organization rooted in Jewish values has remained deeply important to the Winograds as they pursued their own careers, raised their two daughters and now spend quality time with their five grandsons—gently passing on the values imparted to them through the years, including the significance of giving.

Looking to the future

Terry and Carol live on the campus of Stanford University, where they both worked before retirement. Terry taught computer science first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where he had earned his PhD) and then at Stanford, beginning in 1973, where he focused on human-computer interaction design until retiring 12 years ago. Carol was part of the medical faculty at the University of California San Francisco and then Stanford, where she served as clinical director of the Geriatric Research and Education Center until her retirement in 1995.

They urge others thinking about making a legacy gift to AJWS to act during their lifetimes. “Legacy gifts contribute to the organization’s long-term stability,” Terry says. “Because of our politics and our belief that empowering local leaders is the way to be most impactful, making a gift to AJWS made a lot more sense to us than some of the other organizations and their modes of philanthropy.”

“It’s important to give to organizations whose longevity you believe in,” Carol concludes. “We wanted to build on our Jewish heritage. We also liked the idea of looking outside our community, and we’ve seen (from our visits with AJWS grantees) how that can make a difference to the world that isn’t Jewish. That’s something that makes AJWS special. Right now, the work AJWS does is more important than ever. And AJWS isn’t going away.”