May 23, 2022, by admin

 

“I want to give back and participate in our community,” says Rob Allen, a lifelong Sitkan who is something of a nonprofit board member addict. Rob has volunteered and lent his professional expertise as a board member to over 14 nonprofit boards and several for-profit boards including his current term as chairman of the Shee Atika Corporation. While he supports nonprofits in a variety of ways today through donations and his volunteer board work, he wants to make sure he can support nonprofits after he is gone.

Rob, a consultant and principal of Cape Decision Consulting, recently updated his estate plan to include Sitka Sound Science Center (SSSC) by making SSSC a beneficiary of his Roth IRA. “The one thing I’d like people to know is that it’s really easy. It was on my list of things to do for a long time, and I kept putting it off because I thought it was complicated, but it’s really very simple,” says Rob.

Rob comes from a family that built Allen Marine, a highly successful boat building and tour company.  He describes his dad as a hard worker. “My dad taught us that no matter what, when someone needs your help out on the water you stop what you are doing and you go help. I think I’ve taken that to the wider world,” Rob says of his enthusiasm for nonprofit involvement.  “Nonprofits are doing such important stuff. All the incredible things in Alaska are happening in the nonprofit arena right now. They know how to stretch a dollar, and how to get really creative to help people live better lives.”

Rob has a special relationship with the Science Center stemming from the fact that when he was growing up his best friends lived on the Sheldon Jackson Campus and he grew up swimming around the Mill Building, playing on the beach next to the Sage building and running around the campus. Later he was on the board of Sheldon Jackson College when it shut down and he witnessed the moxy and tenacity of the first Science Center board as it kept the College’s salmon hatchery running without any funding. “ It was awesome to see. Now the Sitka Science Center is growing and is a big part of Sitka. It’s really amazing. I’m proud to be part of it now and I hope down the line my estate can help it support it in the future.”

For information about how you can put SSSC into your estate plan go to https://sitkascience.org/planned-giving/  or  contact lbusch@sitkascience.org