Why I Give to FarmHouse Foundation

Rod Penner (NE '84) resides in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife Jona and their son Luke. Rod is currently a FarmHouse Foundation Trustee and is a generous donor to FarmHouse and Campaign 2005. He and Jona recently included FarmHouse Foundation in their wills, making them new members of the FarmHouse Futures Fund.

Rod is Managing Partner for The Gallup Organization. His management consulting focuses on multi-national corporations and improving their "Human Sigma", which is Gallup's metric that assesses an organization's success in optimizing employee contribution and customer impact. Rod has worked for Gallup since 1987.

Rod was recently asked about his participation as a donor and a Trustee of the FarmHouse Foundation.

Why do you contribute to the FarmHouse Foundation?

We contribute since we believe that FH changes the course of men's lives -- including mine and my family (a brother and 3 cousins). Without the International Fraternity and the Foundation to support it, we believe that individual chapters would cease to exist. Furthermore, the leadership training may be the best, if not the only, training that undergraduates receive prior to entering the workplace. It is important to equip FarmHouse men to excel after graduation.

Why did you include a bequest as part of your gifts to FarmHouse Foundation?

The birth of our son highlighted the importance of estate planning. As we became educated on the topic, it was clear that proper planning could maximize our ability to control where our assets went upon our death, and we want to support those people and organizations that we hold most dear. Given that FarmHouse has meant so much to me, and as Jona has seen the quality of men I am fortunate enough to have as brothers, the FarmHouse Foundation was a natural choice to include in our will.

How has FarmHouse affected your life?

College was a defining time for me, and frankly, my values needed to be solidified. FH was a place that not only tolerated my faith, but encouraged it. My friends had values and scholastic ideals equal or higher than mine. In the final analysis, they lifted me up so that I had the confidence to compete in the marketplace.

What is your greatest FarmHouse memory?

I'll answer this way: my greatest on-going pleasure comes from sharing the FH bond with my brother, older cousins, and a younger cousin. Furthermore, the life-long relationships that continue to grow. A group of 15 of us try to get together every summer for a baseball weekend. Knowing each of these men and seeing how every single one of them is a loving husband, father and man of Faith -- well the odds of that are so poor that I cannot help but give much credit to FH as the one common experience.