Planned Giving

Robby Atkins '65

Charitable Lead Trust

Robby Atkins ’65 has been fully funding a full-tuition, room-and-board scholarship for a student-athlete on the college football team each year since 1989. Last year Lorenzo Long ’17 held the honor. This year Datavious Wilson ’20, a business economics and finance major from Hartsville, S.C., was selected.

“I thank God every day that I’m a student-athlete at Wofford College,” says Wilson, the college’s starting linebacker. “I’m the first in my family to go to college, so I understand how blessed I am. Not everyone gets this opportunity.”

Atkins is quick to credit his Wofford degree as a foundation to his successful career in business. He also says that he would not have been able to afford Wofford without scholarship assistance. Both are reasons that Atkins began giving back to the next generation immediately upon graduation. Those first annual gifts to the Terrier Club have grown through the years to include gifts to capital projects, leadership on the Terrier Club Board of Directors and on the college’s Investment Advisory Committee, the establishment of the Atkins student-managed investment fund, the annually funded football scholarship that Wilson now holds, and most recently an annually funded scholarship for a student-athlete on the men’s basketball team and an endowed scholarship for a student-artist. The two annually funded athletic scholarships eventually will be endowed thanks to a charitable lead annuity trust that Atkins set up as part of his estate plans.

The new Atkins Family Endowed Basketball Scholarship reflects Atkins’ admiration for Richardson, but it also honors the success of Wofford’s men’s basketball team and its four trips to the NCAA basketball tournament in the past six years. The Susan Chapman Atkins Endowed Scholarship in the arts pays homage to Susan’s talent, particularly in pastels and colored pencils, and her passion for art and beauty — the ideal complement to the beautiful Rosalind Sallenger Richardson Center for the Arts.

“I’d like to think that any graduate of Wofford would find some way to give something back, regardless of the amount,” says Robby Atkins. “Wofford gives out lots of financial aid, so nearly everyone gets some kind of assistance to attend. I realized that many may not have the funds right out of college, but when their situation changes, I can only hope they will find a way to give back to Wofford.”

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