Incorporating a planned gift for Purdue Athletics, as one of your philanthropic priorities, will allow you to make a more substantial gift than you probably thought was possible. It’s never too early to think about creating a lasting impact for our student-athletes.
Setting up a planned gift now allows you to enjoy benefits and security during your lifetime, and provides you with the satisfaction of knowing your planned gift will make a big difference at Purdue.
A planned gift is simply a contribution that is arranged in the present and allocated in the future. Planned gifts can take the form of bequests, trusts, life insurance policies and beneficiary designations of retirement accounts.
With a planned gift, you can provide for your loved ones, receive tax benefits and generate income while creating a brighter future for student-athletes by establishing a lasting legacy within Purdue Athletics.
Across our teams, we provide 360+ scholarships for our student-athletes. By investing in scholarships through a planned gift, you will help ensure that student-athletes are recruited based on their skill level and alignment with the Purdue tradition. As a result, your gift will significantly enhance the sustainability of our program, while helping shape the next generation of Boilermaker student-athletes.
Purdue Athletics is committed to the total development of each of its student-athletes. A key component in their development is leadership. The John R. Wooden Leadership Institute provides our student-athletes the necessary resources to grow and develop into tomorrow’s leaders. Purdue student-athletes attend classes and seminars as they focus on each of the strategic building blocks that Coach Wooden deemed valuable.
When you make a gift designated to a specific sport, you are pledging your support to our coaches and their vision for how to successfully elevate Purdue Athletics to a new level of excellence. Whether it is invested in team travel throughout the season, national or international competition opportunities, or sophisticated training equipment, your gift will directly impact the team you are passionate about.
Patsy earned a bachelor’s degree in food and nutrition in business from Purdue in 1969, in addition to an MBA in food marketing from Michigan State University in 1970. She retired from Kraft Foods in 2006 after 36 years in corporate food marketing and marketing communications management.
A community volunteer, Patsy serves on the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana Advisory Board and the Purdue College of Health and Human Sciences Dean’s Leadership Council, in addition to the President’s Council Advisory Board. She is a former member of the Health and Human Sciences Alumni Board. Patsy held several offices from 2006 through 2013, including president and treasurer. She serves her community’s Discover Indianapolis Club in Fishers, holding several leadership roles for over 10 years.
Patsy has received several honors, including the Purdue University Nutrition Science Department Hall of Fame recipient in 2009 and the Purdue University College of Health and Human Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016. She also received the college’s Gold and Black Award in 2016, an honor reserved for donors who have moved the college forward by committing exceptional financial resources.
In addition to endowing two scholarships, the Patsy J. Mellott Scholarship and Patsy J. Mellott HHS Scholarship, she established the Patsy J. Mellott Teaching Innovation Award in the College of Health and Human Sciences in 2013. In 2015, she endowed the Patsy J. Mellott Women’s Tennis Coach Performance Award. She is a lead donor in the Christine M. Ladisch Faculty Leadership Award and the Purdue Women’s Network Virginia C. Meredith Scholarship for the College of Health and Human Sciences.
