Benjamin Franklin Award

    Dorothy Speidel

In Dorothy Speidel’s family, a college education was highly valued. Therefore, when she decided to return to work after raising a family, she was determined to work in higher education. She was living in Boston at the time and enjoyed working for four years at MIT as an administrative officer.

However, when she moved back to her home town of Evanston she decided that her goal was to work in development at Northwestern University. After two years with the Annual Fund at De Paul University, in 1983, she applied for a position in planned giving at Northwestern and had a most rewarding eighteen years there.

While she was at Northwestern as the Deputy Director of Planned and Major Gifts, the university mounted a major campus-wide campaign. Dorothy found it a real pleasure to help alumni make gifts for a variety of designations such as endowed scholarships and professorships, athletics, the libraries, programs, and buildings.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dorothy served as president of the Chicago Council on Planned Giving for three years and served on the board of the National Council on Planned Giving, also for three years.

In 1993, Dorothy was asked to serve on the board of The Hadley School for the Blind in Winnetka, Illinois. As a Hadley board member she was able to share her development experience and introduce Charitable Gift Annuities to both the staff and the board. She served on the Hadley board for fifteen years.

The Hadley School offers a great deal to the visually impaired. Today The Hadley School serves over 10,000 students in all 50 states and 100 other countries. The School has four programs: High School, Adult Continuing Education, Family Education and Professional Studies. Every June, Dorothy finds it a thrill to attend the Hadley high school graduation exercises and hear about the students’ lives and their future plans.

In 2008, Dorothy received the Russell Kohr award from the Chicago Council on Planning Giving.
In addition, Dorothy has been a volunteer at her alma mater Denison University in Granville, Ohio, first as National Planned Giving Chairman and then as 50th reunion gift co-chair.

Currently, Dorothy is a docent at Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art and is an active member of the League of Women Voters of Wilmette.