Roy Shanker ’70 and Linda Gibson Set Up Gift Annuities and Fund Scholarship

Linda Gibson and Roy Shanker ’70

After Roy Shanker was accepted to Swarthmore, he came back to campus for a visit. At the time, he planned to attend Princeton. “I was walking up Magill Walk and passed (Dean of Admissions) Fred Hargadon,” Roy says. “As I passed him, he said, ‘Hello, Roy.’ Something as simple as that told me that this was it, and this was the environment that I wanted to be in.”

Roy graduated in 1970 and went on to earn an M.S and a Ph.D. in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon. “It came into focus when I got my first job, which was clearly a function of both Swarthmore and my graduate school, that my education created a wonderful opportunity for me,” Roy says. “I was committed to paying back the school. That is when I first put Swarthmore in my will.”

Since then, Roy and his wife of 28 years, Linda Gibson, have set up five charitable gift annuities with the College and have established the Roy J. ’70 & Linda G. Shanker Scholarship. “I want the school to stay strong,” Roy says. “I want it to be able to keep the financial aid policies that helped me and set me on the path to where I am now.”

The couple used appreciated assets to fund their most recent gifts. “There’s a tax advantage in doing that, but the real benefit is the opportunity to invest in the school,” Roy says. “We’ve evolved in terms of our age and our financial flexibility, so we shifted into charitable annuities. Our view is we’re doing this to accelerate being able to help the school.”

Roy and Linda hope to inspire generosity in others and have established the Legacy Challenge to do so.