Legacy Giving as Part of the Financial Planning Process

After her husband died in 2005, the Reverend Carol Franklin Sutton had financial decisions to make. She and the Reverend Richard D. Sutton (“Dick”) married in 1993 after meeting at an all-staff retreat for the American Baptist Home Mission Society.

When Dick came onboard in 1991 as director of Family Ministries, Carol was a policy advocate in the Office of Government Relations, lobbying in Washington, D.C. on behalf of ABCUSA for civil rights, social justice, and women’s rights. “I figured I would be friendly to the new guy,” she says, laughing.

A lifelong American Baptist, Dick had been an MMBB member long before Carol. In the early ’80s, after Carol had shifted from Southern Baptist to American Baptist and as a job afforded the opportunity, she also joined MMBB. “I rolled over all of my retirement savings from previous employers and have never regretted it,” she says.

A conversation with her sister initiated a process to include MMBB in her estate plan.“I began to think about how much of my MMBB plan to annuitize to ensure sufficient retirement income,” Carol says, already in receipt of Dick’s survivor benefit and knowing her own Social Security income was on the horizon. She did not annuitize a portion of her MMBB funds to ensure their availability for unforeseen emergencies.

“Only later did I realize I had choices about what to do with that pool of money,” Carol says. “I decided to leave it be and make MMBB the beneficiary of 100 percent of those funds.

“Many of my friends who worked for small churches worked for almost nothing,” Carol continues. “When they needed help, MMBB stepped in. And when they retired, they had a decent income through MMBB for the first time in their lives.”

Like Carol, you, too, can make a lasting difference at MMBB as part of your legacy. Please contact Lisa Marie Gerondeau at (212) 870-8007 or lisa.gerondeau@mmbb.org to learn more.