Planned gifts to Princeton can provide you or your family with lifetime payments, offer tax benefits, and help you achieve your financial goals. Gifts made before June 30—like those created by Dr. Jerome W. Canter ’52 and James C. Gerber ’82—also will count toward the Aspire fundraising campaign. As Princeton asks all alumni, parents, and friends to help it achieve its highest aspirations, we hope that you will consider the ways in which a planned gift can help you and the University.
Charitable Remainder Unitrust Supports Exploration of the Brain
After 49 years in the medical field, much of it as a professor of surgery at the George Washington University Medical Center, Dr. Jerome W. Canter ’52 hung up his scrubs eight years ago.
He still talks shop with his wife, Dorothy, who has a doctorate in biophysics, and two of his four sons: Robert J. Canter ’92, a surgical oncologist and assistant professor at University of California-Davis, and Daniel J. Canter ’95, an assistant professor of urology at Emory University. Sons Douglas and David Canter are both lawyers.
Canter launched a second career after earning an executive MBA from New York University. Today he counsels clients for Morgan Stanley, often advising them on investments in the biomedical field.
He has made his own investment in Princeton by establishing a charitable remainder unitrust, which allows donors to make a significant gift and receive payments back for life or for a specified term. When the trust ends, the remaining funds are used by Princeton. His gift, which counts toward the $1.75 billion goal for Princeton’s Aspire fundraising campaign, will benefit one of the campaign’s priorities—the Program in Neuroscience.
“The real advances of the future will come in neuroscience,” he says. “The field is exploding, and people are beginning to understand the implications research in this area will bring.”
Charitable Lead Trust Energizes Entrepreneurial Endeavors
While visiting the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, James C. Gerber ’82 learned about the opportunities it offers undergraduates to flex their entrepreneurial muscles. These range from “write your own business plan” contests to encouraging students to launch their own firms.
“Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking and acting,” Gerber said. “Princeton students in both the hard sciences and the social sciences are benefitting from the Keller programs. There are already some exciting start-ups to show for this investment.”
He cited efforts by Christine Blauvelt ’12 and Arielle Sandor ’12 to develop a job placement service for Kenyans, most of whom have cell phones but lack Internet access. Their service would use text messaging to match job seekers with employers.
To support these kinds of initiatives, Gerber established the James C. Gerber Fund for Entrepreneurship and Innovation through a charitable lead trust, which provides fixed payments to Princeton each year for a designated number of years; the remainder goes to a beneficiary, usually children or grandchildren. When interest rates are low (as they are now), transfer taxes can be eliminated completely. Gerber’s gift will provide payments to Princeton for 25 years; then it will benefit his son and daughter.
A mechanical and aerospace engineering major at Princeton, Gerber earned an MBA at Harvard. He is chief financial officer of WorldStrides, an educational travel organization for students in elementary through graduate school. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, Ann Gerber, and their two children.
“Great ideas come from the most unexpected places,” Gerber says, “and this gift is intended to help Princeton to stay amongst the top ranks of schools where such great ideas can incubate and become reality.”