Local painter Glenda Hares has established several charitable gift annuities to support scholarships that benefit students studying the arts and humanities. (Photo by August Jennewein)

Glenda Hares used to make the drive from nearby Ferguson, Missouri, to the University of Missouri–St. Louis to attend classes in the early days of the university, back when the campus consisted of only a couple of buildings north of Natural Bridge Road.

Her interactions with UMSL were infrequent over the next five decades as she built a career as an artist and painter, earning regional recognition and numerous awards.

That’s perhaps why she was so intrigued hearing about the university from an UMSL graduate student, whom she met after seeing the student’s performance in a one-woman play Hares attended with two friends in 2014.

Hares, at the time, had been in conversations with Lyle Brizendine, then UMSL’s senior director of development for planned giving, about donating to St. Louis Public Radio but wound up also setting up a tour of the UMSL campus to learn more about the university.

“I was shocked,” Hares said. “It had grown so much.”

Hares had a chance to meet with faculty and heard an impassioned pitch from Brizendine about the value of scholarships, and she decided she wanted to lend her support.

“I thought it was such a worthwhile place,” Hares said.

She’s had no regrets.

Hares, now a member of the Chancellor’s Circle giving society, has had opportunities since she began donating to UMSL to learn even more about the university and its students.

“They impressed me so much with their enthusiasm and the way that they were being so supported by the university,” Hares said. “I just feel like they’re not going to get lost there. In such a big organization, it could so easily happen. Even in smaller ones, but I feel like if they need help, it’s there.”

Hares has a particular affinity for UMSL scholarship programs focused on degree completion.

“The way that the university reaches out to people that normally might not be able to go to school or finish school just really made a big impression,” she said.

Many of Hares’ contributions have come in the form of charitable gift annuities, which are contracts that provide donors with a fixed income stream for life in exchange for their charitable giving. A portion of the payments from CGAs are tax-free for a period of years, as determined by the donor’s life expectancy.

Hares wasn’t familiar with CGAs until her friend and financial advisor suggested she look into them.

“It’s a good source of income while you’re doing a good deed,” Hares said. “You’re helping other people while you’re helping yourself. That’s a win-win situation.

“I get so much income from the charitable annuities at this point that I can make more of them, so it just keeps improving. I had no idea that it would work out this way when I started it, but it just blossomed. It’s made such a difference in my financial position.”

Hares was first drawn to helping students in fine and performing arts.

She is an accomplished artist, focusing on still life and landscape paintings.

“The thing that drives me is color,” Hares said of her art. “That’s what it’s all about. I describe myself as an old lady impressionist.”

She has found inspiration from artists such as Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Wallace Herndon Smith and Henri Fanti-Latour, and the walls of her ranch-style home in Kirkwood, Missouri, are adorned with work by painters such as Fred Conway and Wolf Kahn, in addition to her own creations.

For more than two decades, Hares has been showing her work every other year in exhibitions at Norton’s Fine Art & Framing on Big Bend Boulevard. Her most recent took place last October.

Hares is also an avid supporter of performing arts in the St. Louis region and remains active on two committees dealing with fine arts with the Kirkwood Arts Commission and serves on the volunteer board of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

She has always enjoyed being able to assist students working in those creative spaces, but her giving has also touched other students studying in the humanities.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Hares said. “People need help, and it’s all worthwhile.”