Double the Giving, Double the Fun
Schertzer Twins Want Their generation to Start Giving Back to the UO
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Twins Robert and George Scherzer of Portland, both 1974 UO graduates, say no one could have had a better college experience than they did. They loved their classes, they both enjoyed working as manager of the men’s basketball team, they jogged with Steve Prefontaine in Hendricks Park, and they watched the Vietnam War protests on campus.
“George and I and everyone we went to school with are very nostalgic about our college years,” says Rob, an attorney. “We had a wild, interesting, stimulating time and it was productive time—it gave us great careers.”
Now the Scherzers want to make sure that UO students of today and tomorrow have as great an experience as they did. And they want all their friends to get on board.
They each have made an initial gift of $25,000 to the university and a commitment to give $5,000 a year for the next fifteen years. So, altogether, they have pledged a total of $200,000. They plan to contact at least 100 fellow Ducks and persuade them to make their own commitments.
The Scherzers’ gifts will support the UO Libraries, even though most of their previous gifts have gone to athletics, and George was one of the top volunteer fundraisers for UO athletics for several years. Why the library? “It connects with so many students every day and we remember spending many hours in the library as students—even a few Friday nights,” says George, a senior vice president with McAdams, Wright & Ragen in Portland.
The twins started thinking about giving back to the university when they attended a university dinner in Portland “where a lot of people were talking about $1 million gifts,” remembers George. “Rob and I looked at each other. We knew we couldn’t make $1 million gifts. But we started talking about how we could make a difference.”
“We think there are a lot of people like us,” he adds. “We want to connect and plant seeds with more people to give back. It’s time we start. We don’t see enough of it being done.”
“We are most grateful for George and Robert’s commitment to the library, both through their philanthropy and their energetic engagement in encouraging others to give,” says Deborah Carver, Philip H. Knight Dean of Libraries. “The Scherzer Family Endowment Fund will give us the flexibility to respond to the most immediate and pressing needs related to the collections, technology, and instruction. It’s also rewarding and fun to work with two people who share so much enthusiasm for their university."
