Jim Tollerton: From Handball to Hospital Board to Legacy Society Member

Jim Tollerton was a young insurance executive who played handball with a couple of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System physicians when one of them asked if he would be interested in running for the hospital board. Jim said yes and sat on the board for a decade (1974-1984). In the late 1970s, he helped found the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation. Now he and his wife Susan are Legacy Society members, making estate gifts to the Healthcare Foundation from his IRA and from a life insurance policy.

“Sarasota Memorial is a fabulous institution—probably the best community hospital in America, both clinically and in terms of facilities,” says Jim, who has personal knowledge of the hospital’s ability to deliver exceptional care; his three children were born there, and both of his parents and his wife have been patients. “The creation of the Healthcare Foundation and the fundraising it has done has helped SMH to purchase state-of-the-art equipment as well as recruit and retain the best medical professionals.”

Jim chose life insurance and his IRA for the two estate gifts partly because they are so easy to accomplish with simple beneficiary designations. Both of the gifts are designated to help fund the hospital’s Excel Awards, the SMH employee recognition program that has been honoring peer-nominated employees—an award that Jim founded in 1987.

“I had a life insurance policy I didn’t think the family needed, so I named the Healthcare Foundation as a beneficiary to help fund the Excel program,” Jim says. “I also used a distribution from my IRA to finish funding the initial endowment of the program, and it made sense to name the Healthcare Foundation as a beneficiary of that IRA.”

Jim also made a current gift from his IRA to set up the Tollerton Family Excel Endowment.

“Over the age of 72, you know you have to take a required minimum distribution (RMD) from your IRA; and if you don’t take it, there is an excise tax of 50%,” Jim says. “I simply called the advisor who handles my IRA and said send the RMD amount and a bit more to the Healthcare Foundation. I avoid paying tax on the RMD income, but it still counts as taking my RMD. It’s a win-win-win.”

Jim grew up in Sarasota, left town to go to college at Florida State University, and then returned—going into the insurance business in 1970 and continuing for the past 50 years. He was a young executive when he was first elected to the hospital board, serving for a decade and being involved in some crucial decisions.

“In 1986 I turned 40, and I wanted to do something more for the community—so I asked my friends and family to donate to the Healthcare Foundation in lieu of gifts, and we raised $10,000,” Jim says. “But I wanted to do more.” The result was the monthly Excel Awards.

“Forty percent of all the Excel winners have either retired from Sarasota Memorial or are still active here,” Jim says. “Hospitals generally have a high turnover, and to have 40% of the award winners stay makes me very pleased and very proud. And they all have such amazing stories of their time here.”

That sense of loyalty leads to the special culture at Sarasota Memorial that Jim has experienced firsthand.

“My mother told me in her last hours how she appreciated the doctors and nurses and the care she received,” Jim says. “It really is a community hospital. They try to do it the right way, to take care of people and to run an efficient hospital. Life begins with attitude—I know that sounds corny—but the attitude at Sarasota Memorial is positive and helpful. It’s really true that they really care.”