EILEEN LEWIS MAKES AJWS IRA BENEFICIARY TO SUPPORT OUR MISSION INTO THE FUTURE

Eileen J. Lewis first encountered American Jewish World Service years ago when she saw an advertisement for study tours in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. The group travel opportunity to see global grassroots work in action caught her interest. She saved the information and came back to it after her son’s departure for college made traveling easier. In 2013, she signed up for an AJWS trip to India. She’s been a dedicated AJWS supporter ever since.

Eileen says traveling with AJWS made other parts of the world real to her. “Instead of being so abstract, they have been much more tangible,” she says. “India was such a positive experience that when Uganda came up, I was so game to go. Rather than just being a tourist, meeting real people — local, grassroots activists supported by AJWS and the communities they serve — gave me a greater depth of knowledge as well as a window into what life is truly like for these communities in a global context. Now when I learn about AJWS’s work in countries I haven’t visited, I can translate that sense of tangibility to those places and to AJWS’s partners and their work.”

When it came time to do her estate planning, Eileen knew she wanted to pay it forward — which is why she has designated AJWS as the beneficiary of her IRA. “It was important to me to make sure that when I’m not around to make annual donations, my gift will provide some bridge funding in lieu of my annual giving,” she says. “It was also a way of keeping my IRA out of my taxable estate. An IRA distribution directly to a charity is not considered part of your estate.”

Eileen encourages others to consider joining her in making a planned gift to support AJWS’s mission far into the future. “An estate gift has a way of providing some continuity of funding after we are gone,” she concludes. “I think that who you designate as the recipient for a legacy gift makes a statement to your heirs about what mattered to you. And that’s very valuable.”