Coming Full Circle: An Alumni Couple Gives Back

For John and Maggie McKinnon, supporting Western Washington University isn't simply about making a gift. It's about honoring a place that shaped their education, their careers, and even their life together.

The couple's connection to Western began in the 1970s. Maggie transferred to Western from Everett Community College in 1973, where she found a welcoming campus community that made higher education feel both accessible and achievable.

“The size of the student population was small enough to not feel overwhelmed, yet provided interactions with people from different backgrounds that made life interesting both on and off campus,” she said.

As the first person in her family to earn both a bachelor's and master's degree, Maggie credits Western's support systems, from work-study opportunities to a teaching assistantship, with helping make her education possible.

“Without this help from Western, my educational goals would have been so much more difficult to achieve,” she said.

John remembers Western as a place of personal growth and discovery.

“Living on Western’s beautiful campus, making friends, and being immersed in the college experience was a perfect way for me to begin my adult education,” he said.

The experiences they had at Western continued to shape their lives long after graduation. Maggie built a career as a biologist with the Washington Department of Fisheries and later the Washington Department of Ecology, where she worked for 25 years before retiring in 2015. John pursued a career in education, drawing on the analytical and writing skills he developed through his science coursework to support curriculum development and professional learning in his school district.

But there was more to their experience at Western than the education they received.

“Most importantly,” Maggie said, “I met my future husband John at Western!”

Today, the McKinnons continue to invest in the university that gave them so much. As they considered how best to support Western, they chose to make a gift through a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) from an Individual Retirement Account (IRA), a giving option available to many donors age 70½ and older.

“We have been fortunate enough to have enough income from our pensions and Social Security that a substantial portion of our supplemental investments remain untapped,” John said. “Looking ahead to when those mandatory distributions kick in, we decided that we would rather that money be our source for charitable giving instead of generating additional taxable income.”

A QCD allows eligible donors to make gifts directly from an IRA to a qualified charitable organization. For individuals who are required to take annual Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), a QCD can satisfy some or all of that requirement while potentially reducing taxable income.

For the McKinnons, the decision was ultimately about giving back to a university that helped shape the course of their lives.

Their generosity will help create opportunities for future generations of Western students, ensuring that others can benefit from the same supportive community, transformative education, and life-changing experiences that meant so much to them.