Meet Susan Ruth Campell as we celebrate “National Make a Will Month”

You may not have known, but August is "National Make a Will Month." You also may be surprised to learn that two thirds of Americans haven’t yet formalized their estate plans, leaving their loved ones to navigate the murky and frustrating waters of probate court, or worse, forfeiting their estates to their state governments due to lack of a documented plan.

This is why this month we celebrate Susan Ruth Campbell, a member of Imagination Stage’s Creative Legacy Society. She lived in Virginia for much of her life, and without kids to leave her estate to, she thought about what she cared about most - art and education. So she decided to leave the proceeds of her estate to Imagination Stage and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Bequests are often transformative for the organizations that receive them. In our case, Ms Campbell’s gift single-handedly powered our growth this year despite historic inflation, allowing us to increase the number of students we served by nearly 40% to 69,000.

Now is a great time to start estate planning, and honestly it’s not as hard as it may seem.  In fact, the easiest and most tax-efficient way to leave a gift is to make your favorite nonprofits a beneficiary of your IRA. And when you do, consider the nonprofits in your life who have made a positive impact on your family. Your gift - whether it’s $10,000 or $300,000 - will make an indelible mark on its capacity to pay it forward to the next generation. For more information about Imagination Stage's Creative Legacy Society, contact Managing Director Jason Najjoum at [email protected].