By making a gift to Elon through their estate, donors to the Elon LEADS Campaign have created a lasting legacy at the university while providing essential funding to secure Elon’s future. Through the campaign’s A Will to Lead initiative, alumni, parents, and friends have made generous gifts to support scholarships and other key priorities that will prepare outstanding leaders to guide our future.
For Elon alumni and parents Burney ’87 P’18 and Dina Jennings ’87 P’18, making an estate gift to their university was the right thing to do. Their gift will support a scholarship the couple endowed in 2008 to make an Elon education possible for students with financial need.
“It feels good to know that when we are no longer here, there will be a very nice fund for students to be able to attend Elon who might not otherwise have been able to,” said Burney, an Elon trustee and member of the Elon LEADS Campaign Steering Committee whose family spans four generations at the university.
“We love Elon and what it’s doing,” Dina said. “There are people who want to attend Elon as their first-choice school and can’t because of finances, and we wanted to make it easier on their families.”
Ike Credle ’83 wanted to honor the sacrifices his mother made so he could earn an Elon degree. He made an estate gift to endow the Rebecca A. Credle Scholarship for Study Abroad to ensure his mother’s legacy would endure at Elon and to allow students with financial need to participate in one of Elon’s nationally recognized, high-impact engaged learning programs.
“It’s important for me to leave a legacy at Elon,” Ike explained. “I want to help someone like myself come to this great university and have the financial resources to do the things other students do, including studying abroad.”
Inspired by the outstanding education their daughter Grace ’17 received, Elon alumnus and parent Rich Johnson ’87 P’17 and wife Laurie Johnson P’17 made several leadership gifts to the campaign, including endowing the Richard S. and Laurie L. Johnson Elon Engagement Scholarship. Placing Elon in their estate will provide additional funding for their scholarship.
“I think education is our most important resource,” Rich said. “It’s learning about different cultures in a campus environment and then experiencing those cultures as part of a global community.”
Added Laurie, “Higher education benefits not only the person who is receiving it, but it also benefits the community from which that person came.”
Alumni Rich ’97 and Jenn Nowalk ’99 believe in supporting Elon—and planning for the future. That is why they decided to include a generous gift to Elon in each of their estate plans as part of the campaign.
“Elon has given us so much, and we wouldn’t be where we are professionally and personally without Elon,” Rich said. “It’s where we grew up.”
“We are really proud of the Elon of today,” Jenn said. “It makes us proud to be able to say we’re Elon alumni and connected to a great university.”
The couple were inspired by the name of the Elon LEADS Campaign and its message of producing leaders to guide the university’s future.
“We wanted to show that even though we are in our forties, we can make this kind of gift now and empower the next generation of leaders,” Rich said.
