In this episode of You Can’t Take it With You, host Jim Dunlop sits down with Signe Gates to talk about the transformative power of generosity. They discuss Signe’s transition from practicing law to philanthropy, her strategic approach to charitable giving, and the importance of aligning one’s philanthropic efforts with personal values for maximum impact.
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Signe Gates is a retired corporate lawyer whose career culminated in a significant role as the Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of the Barnes Group, an aerospace and industrial company based in Bristol, Connecticut. Following her retirement, Signe has focused her efforts on philanthropy, particularly in educational institutions, marking her commitment through her notable position on the board of trustees at Susquehanna University. There, she holds the distinction of being the first woman to chair the board in its 166-year history. Signe resides in Northern Virginia, close to her roots in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Episode Summary:
What inspires a person to leave a career in law behind and embark on a philanthropic journey? What propels someone to shift focus toward making a positive impact?
According to Signe Gates, a retired corporate lawyer and a philanthropic visionary, the journey is rooted in a deep-seated belief in the value of giving back, inspired by early family influences and a strategic approach to generosity. She highlights the importance of strategic giving, choosing initiatives that not only align with her passions but also promise a tangible impact. This approach, Signe explains, allows her to maximize the effectiveness of her contributions, ensuring that each dollar spent is an investment in a cause that matters deeply to her.
Here’s a glimpse at what you’ll learn:
- Signe Gates talks about how her parents influenced her generous nature
- What motivates Signe’s philanthropic choices
- Tips for people who want to start or enhance their philanthropy
- Why Signe thinks of philanthropy as an investment
- Making philanthropy central to financial planning
- Signe’s advice on charities
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Jim Dunlop on LinkedIn
- Advent Partners
- Signe Gates on LinkedIn
- Barnes Group Inc.
- Susquehanna University
- Coins for Alzheimer’s Research Trust (CART)
- Report for America
Sponsor for this episode:
This episode is brought to you by Advent Partners — a financial planning partner dedicated to helping you make informed decisions that simplify your financial journey.
Our seasoned team is committed to guiding you toward your financial goals. We offer tailored solutions based on your specific needs, from standalone financial planning to integrated financial management.
Whether you are planning for the future, investing for growth, or navigating financial hurdles, Advent Partners is here to provide insights, recommendations, and a clear financial roadmap.
To learn more about Advent Partners and how we can guide your financial success, visit AdventPartnersFP.com.
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:00
Welcome to the You Can’t Take it With You show where we feature stories around generosity designed to inspire and encourage others to do meaningful things in their communities. Now, here’s your host, Jim Dunlop.
Jim Dunlop 0:17
Hi. Jim Dunlop here, a wealth advisor and host of the show where I sit down with people who get it when it comes to generosity. I’m excited to have guests who can give us stories on generosity to not only inspire our listeners, but to give practical ideas on ways we can give. Today’s guest is Signe Gates. But before I get to Signe, I want to share that this episode is brought to you by Advent Partners. Get ready for good. Advent is a financial planning team dedicated to helping you make informed decisions that simplify your financial journey. Advent’s seasoned team of professionals is committed to guiding you toward your financial goals. We offer tailored solutions based on your specific needs. From standalone financial planning to integrated financial management, we help our clients get ready for good. Whether you’re planning for the future, investing for growth, or navigating financial hurdles, Advent Partners is here to provide insights, recommendations, and a clear financial roadmap. To learn more about Advent Partners and how we can guide your financial success, visit readyforgood.com.
I’m excited about today’s guest. When I think of generosity, she’s one of the first people that comes to mind. But first let me tell you a little bit about her. Signe Gates is a retired corporate lawyer. The last stop in her legal career was as senior vice president general counsel and secretary of the Barnes Group, an industrial and aerospace portfolio headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a single letter B. She now lives in Northern Virginia near family in Montgomery County, Maryland, where she grew up. Signe is a philanthropist. She and I serve together on the board of trustees of Susquehanna University, our alma mater. I’m on the executive committee and chair of the Property and Finance Committee. Signe is the first woman to chair the board in the schools 166-year history. Signe, welcome.
Signe Gates 2:07
Thanks, Jim. It’s good to be with you.
Jim Dunlop 2:09
It is good to talk to you today. I know that this is a topic, this topic of generosity and giving and philanthropy that is near to both of us and dear to both of us. And so I want to talk about that. But before we get into it, could you just give me a little background on you? Not the professionalism bit but a little bit about where you came from, and maybe what your origin, what I would call your generosity origin story, how, what got you into this space and got you interested?
Signe Gates 2:44
Well, it started with my parents, Jim, I grew up in a lower middle-class family. And my parents were generous to the extent that they could be, most of their monetary giving was to their church. But they were also active philanthropists, they did things that were supportive of other people. One of the most compelling stories that to this day I hold is about my dad. My dad was a construction worker. And we lived down the road from an African American family and I grew up in Maryland, south of the Mason Dixon Line, so I can still remember whites-only water fountains, and whites-only entrances to buildings. This family was an African American family, they lived in what could only be characterized as a shack. And somehow, and I don’t know how, my dad learned that the father in the family needed work. And my father took it upon himself. The African American man was unskilled. And my father took it upon himself to find a laborer’s job at my dad’s job site, which actually was in Fort Dietrich. Oh, yeah. And would pick this man up every day and take him to work with him. And it was transformative for that family. And it made a tremendous impression on me. When I got to Susquehanna, I was so overcome with a sense of generosity and gratitude that my parents enabled me to have what was just the most incredible experience of my life. And I think at that point, I probably, though I wouldn’t have used this term, came to be disposed toward what David Brooks calls pre-dispositional gratitude. I mean, I to this day, I am surprised when people do nice things for me, when nice things happen to me. I, I’m always surprised, and it engenders in me a sense of gratitude. So I want to do something I want to give back.
Jim Dunlop 5:00
So see, tell me about what motivates your philanthropic choices, the causes that you elect to involve yourself in and support?
Signe Gates 5:10
Well, it’s been a process, but I find I’ve honed it down. And I tend to be attracted to certain areas of passion. And I have a lot of passion. So that can be education is public television and radio. In my case, it’s an organization in Connecticut, that breeds seeing eye dogs, and has a unique placement approach with the blind people to whom they give these dogs. It’s lots of different things that catch my attention. For whatever reason, I tend to do a little bit of research. And if the mission resonates with me, I pursue it, I typically begin with a smaller gift, my giving is, is two tiers, I’ve become deliberate about all of this. That’s good. Yeah. And the first tier is hundreds of dollars. And the second tier is thousands of dollars, or tens of thousands of dollars. And usually, the charities that are in the hundreds of dollars range, are my most promising prospects for moving into the second tier. So I am, I’ll tell you about an experiment that I did, which has had varying, though, generally positive effects, I tried it out first with the public radio station in Washington, DC. And I’ve been a public radio station supporter in Connecticut, where I lived for 30 years and now in Virginia, and I wrote them a letter just out of the blue to the advancement, one of the advancement people and introduced myself, established that I was a public radio supporter, and made a proposal that I would increase my gift. In that case, I think it was to $10,000. If they were interested in working with me on a challenge opportunity to increase their number of donors, I structured the letter to say, if you’re not interested, that’s fine. I’ll continue to support you at my current level. But if you are, let me know by this and such date. I’ve always heard in response to my letters, as I say, sometimes they’ve worked out more successfully than others. First effort was an enormous success.
Jim Dunlop 7:38
So go ahead. No, so I was going to say, you know, this is a show to inspire people, but also to give them practical advice. And I was going to say, what other kinds of tips and strategies would you offer to people who are either looking to get started with their personal philanthropy or, or improve, and maybe do better with the giving that they’re doing?
Signe Gates 8:00
Okay. One thing that I do is I give throughout the year, every month, I give to some charities, and I tend to follow an annual cycle, to the extent that charities stay on my personal list. My second point is that if I’m not feeling connected to that charity, if I’m not getting a thank you, if I’m not still believing with the same passion in that charity, I abandon it and move on. Don’t just stick with it, for whatever reason, because part of this is to make me feel satisfied and good. And as if I’m expressing gratitude. I once read that it’s much more helpful. And I’ve found this to be the case, to give more to fewer charities. If I have my bucket of philanthropic dollars, instead of sort of sprinkling them around to lots and lots and lots of charities, I have a much more narrow list. And that tends to build relationships also, because the charity through saving $500 is going to be more responsive and more hopeful that I’ll increase that giving than if I’m giving them $5. So those are a couple of the things that I use as guidelines.
Jim Dunlop 9:28
And I know for you just from talking in the past that you’re always looking for the idea of a return or creating leverage. I know you talked a little bit about the gift with public radio and a challenge grant, tell me a little bit more about that idea of the return that you’re looking for on your investment and, and what that means to you.
Signe Gates 9:53
Sure. As a corporate lawyer, of course, I think in business terms and your ROI is obviously relevant to, to business. But as I think about my philanthropy, I also think about my philanthropy as an investment. So I look for return on that. In that regard, I seek probably three or four things. I like uniqueness, I like to give a gift that no one else has thought of. And that requires collaboration, not dictating to a charity. But I can also, often if I present an idea, and they’re often translated from my business experience, we can tweak together, we can work to, to tweak it to be useful to the charity. We can come back to that.
Jim Dunlop 10:51
Yeah, I was, I would love to know, if you have a good example of that.
Signe Gates 10:54
I’ll come back to that. I want my gift to be impactful. Sometimes that can come from uniqueness, sometimes it can come from a gift challenge that enables the organization to broaden its donor list and capacity. I look for relationships, particularly for the charities in that second tier, I describe the thousands of dollars, I want to be connected to those folks. And I have lunch with the director of the DC public radio station and every advancement VP. And those sorts of connections are really, really important to me, because my return on my investment from philanthropy is to feel good. If I’m having an effect that makes me feel good.
Jim Dunlop 11:52
Yeah, and have an impact on others. So do you have an example of, you know, this idea of give a good example of a unique gift that you’ve done that maybe no one else had thought of, and what the impact is.
Signe Gates 12:08
Yeah, there is a couple of them, but I’ll tell you about one, and it’s a fund that I created at Susquehanna University, our alma mater, and it is the fund for development, leadership development of the senior leadership team. And the senior leadership team is about 12 people. This funding enables them to have personal coaches and leadership development experiences. Not every single year, but roughly every other year, every two years or so. And that’s an area that probably I’m assuming most donors to a college or university wouldn’t think about. They think about correctly and wisely about scholarships, sure, about infrastructure. But I was thinking about the long-term future Susquehanna and trying to cultivate in the most senior leaders, leadership talent, not intuitive as you and I both know from our business experience, and having opportunities to develop leadership talent is not first on the list at a college or university, when the dollar is divided up. There tend to be some funds, but they aren’t generous, because they shouldn’t be, they can’t be so that is a niche that I thought I could step into and fulfill, and Susquehanna, if we’re not unique in having that opportunity for our senior leaders…we’re certainly unusual.
Jim Dunlop 13:49
Well, and I would say there’s a long history out, and I’ll say, particularly in the recent history of the last 20 years, that I’ve really known what’s going on at Susquehanna, of really strong leaders and really great leaders, and consistency from one to the next. And that we’ve seen really good leaders in the institution who have moved on to make sure that their successors were even more successful. So what a great testament and I know how much that has strengthened Susquehanna.
Signe Gates 14:25
Well, I’m glad you’ve noticed it. You know, one of the interesting things is, the university is finding that it’s a unique and advantageous recruitment tool for senior leaders because Susquehanna doesn’t necessarily pay the highest salaries as compared with other fancier institutions for senior leaders, but to be able to say to a prospect, among other things, your benefit package includes a personal coach who will confer at least quarterly, is proving to be compelling.
Jim Dunlop 14:58
Yeah, that’s great. it. So, you know, I’m always looking for stories in these conversations and things like that. But I’m wondering if you could tell me about someone who has inspired your personal philanthropy? Why, and maybe have an example of things that you’ve witnessed that have inspired you to do the work that you’re doing?
Signe Gates 15:22
You know, Jim, I have a circle of friends, all of whom are philanthropically inclined. And I also know, as friends, several people who work in fundraising. So I have the opportunity to have conversations with them. And I actually encouraged conversations. And that’s a piece of advice that I don’t offer, not necessarily about amounts, but about what your passions are, what you’ve chosen as your targets for your philanthropy and why. But I’ll tell you about one person who is the single most inspiring philanthropist, and Roger, though he’s now deceased, continues to be an inspiration for me. I met Roger and Jeanne Ackerman on a tour in Northern Italy in the late 90s. And we were talking, and I was telling them about the scholarship fund that I had created in memory of my late husband. And that led to Roger telling me about this new charitable venture that he had just begun. And he had created Coins for Alzheimer’s Research Trust, his wife’s, his mother-in-law had suffered from Alzheimer’s. And after she passed, Roger decided that he wanted to create funding to support niche research and Alzheimer’s that wasn’t being supported by big pharma, or by the federal government, they tend to pick themes and follow those. And Roger wanted to provide seed money for researchers who were going off in other directions that looked as if they were promising; he was a Rotarian. And he began this, he began CART by collecting loose change from his fellow Rotarians before rotary meetings every week. And he lived in Sumter, South Carolina. So it started with the Sumter Rotary Club, even went around the rotary clubs in South Carolina and then North Carolina, and it kept spreading. So that CART is very prominent, certainly in the southern part of the US. In they he created an infrastructure with a team of doctors who review the applications, they tend to be from r1 universities, research universities all over the country. And then the doctors present their recommendations to a volunteer board of non-doctors who then decide who’s going to get a grant that year. I’m to this day, and this is from the late 90s, until now, to this day, however much money you give to CART, every penny that goes to the research structure is all volunteer and otherwise supported. The first grant of…CART was founded in 95. And the first grant was $100,000 in 1999, as May 2022, which is the latest information I have, they’ve given over $11 million in grants. Grants run anywhere from $50,000 to $300,000. But it’s enough money to get a research project over the hump so they can present it to a company or pursue a bigger project or find another foundation that supports them. And CART isn’t limited to Rotarians. I mean I contribute, it’s a 501 C 3, so I contribute every year. But Roger, that’s not the only thing philanthropically that Roger did, to me, he demonstrated that kind of creative thinking, finding that unique niche, and then acting on it. And really creative ways in enlisting other people. Roger was not a poor man. He wasn’t JP Morgan. But he was very comfortable. But he wisely knew how to enlist other people offering his example but then getting them excited about it as well. He’s my most inspirational philanthropist.
Jim Dunlop 19:43
Yeah. Well, I, you know, I know as we were getting in preparing for the show, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about was your relationship with your financial advisor. Obviously, that’s the work I’m in and I’m always fascinated to hear about that. And I know that in your financial planning personal financial planning, philanthropy is an important part of that conversation. Tell me what that looks like, and how those conversations go.
Signe Gates 20:12
Jim, I probably have, my financial advisors name is Jim also, I probably have spent interest in terms of hours talking more about my philanthropy and my philanthropic inclinations with my financial advisor than anybody else. He asks about that dimension of my life at every quarterly meeting. And he took it into account as we did my estate planning. And as we review that, he’s, it’s forefront in his mind as well as mine. I don’t think I could work with a financial planner, who wasn’t sensitive to that part of my approach to my financial situation.
Jim Dunlop 21:02
Oh, good. And so it’s, it’s, it’s encouraging to hear that that’s a central part of the conversations that you’re having. And, you know, as we were preparing and putting together your biography, I know that you were professionally an attorney, but you think of yourself in the role as philanthropist always. So that’s really…
Signe Gates 21:26
You know, Jim, I came to that after I retired. And I’ve become quite deliberate when people ask me what I do, or you know what I do in my retirement or if they think I’m still working. And I have discovered that by saying I’m a philanthropist, I grow into that role, yeah, admitting it to myself and then telling the world somehow bolsters, my impressions, my sense of myself as a philanthropist, and makes me that much more excited about philanthropic things I do.
Jim Dunlop 22:02
How long have you been retired?
Signe Gates 22:04
Oh, gosh, I retired in 2010.
Jim Dunlop 22:06
Okay, so it’s been 14 years. Yeah, yeah, well, good. So I really, I want to thank you for taking the time to visit with us today. And I, before we wrap up, I just want to let people know that if they’re interested in being in contact with Signe, they can do that through my company, Advent Partners, and our website, readyforgood.com. They can send a message to us, and we would be happy to forward that on and get you connected with Signe. But our final question, Signe for today is if you could share some advice or wisdom on a billboard or somewhere where you reach lots of people, what would your message be?
Signe Gates 22:54
I think it would be that charities are like public companies, they all want our money, we have the opportunity to figure out where we want to invest, whether it’s a public company, or in a charity. And if their performance isn’t satisfying, we have every right, and I encourage people, to abandon that dissatisfaction because there are lots and lots of other charities out there who will welcome our gifts.
Jim Dunlop 23:26
Well, I was going to end there. But I just want to ask you one more question off my script here. But are there any organizations or projects you’re involved with right now that you’re really excited about that we didn’t get a chance to touch on today?
Signe Gates 23:41
I’m always excited about my work with Susquehanna. That’s…Susquehanna is my number one philanthropic target. And I’m most excited about that. Another area that I’ve just started exploring, with respect to support, Jim, has to do with journalism and local newspapers. I’m concerned about the demise of our local newspapers. And I’ve started supporting a charity called Report for America. Which funds journalists who can then work for local newspapers. So I’m just in the beginnings of that, but it’s an example of something that caught my attention, you know, a year or two ago, and I’ve started noticing around and I’m trying it out.
Jim Dunlop 24:33
Yeah. Well, I like that idea and living in a small town as I do with a small-town newspaper. I know that that’s really important. Yeah, yeah. So well, Signe, thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us today. Again, if you want to be in contact with Signe, you can go to readyforgood.com and send a message to Advent Partners and we’ll get it to Signe. Signe. Thank you so much. Great having you.
Signe Gates 24:58
Jim, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
Jim Dunlop 24:59
Yes.
Outro 25:03
Thanks for joining us to hear stories of generosity that remind us that you can’t take it with you. Visit our site at canttakeitwithyou.com for more details on today’s episode, and to subscribe to future shows.
Disclosure 25:21
Advent Partners may utilize third-party websites, including social media websites, blogs, and other interactive content. We consider all interactions with clients, prospective clients, and the general public on these sites to be advertisements under the securities regulations. As such, we generally retain copies of information that we or third parties may contribute to such sites. This information is subject to review and inspection by Thrivent Advisor Network or the securities regulators. Advisory Persons of Thrivent provide advisory services under a “doing business as” name or may have their own legal business entities. However, advisory services are engaged exclusively through Thrivent Advisor Network, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Advent Partners and Thrivent Advisor Network, LLC are not affiliated companies.
