Giving While Living: Helen Blumen and Jan Acton Provide a $50,000 Gift for Students’ Most Urgent Needs

Helen Blumen and Jan Acton’s latest gift to Montgomery College—a $50,000 donation to the Student Essentials Fund—provides emergency funding for expenses like rent, food, transportation, and technology. These costs often fall outside traditional financial aid but are critical to a student’s ability to continue. The couple based their decision on one core belief: meeting need in the moment matters most. 

“My husband and I are very keen on donations for current use,” said Blumen. “We want to see the effect of what’s going on, not in the future, but right now. What could be more ‘right now’? People being able to go to school and stay in school because they can eat, pay their rent, put gas in their car … all that stuff. That doesn’t sound like education, but it’s essential.” 

That understanding shaped how the couple have approached their philanthropy at Montgomery College. What began with a kiln for the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus Art Department grew into scholarships through the ACES program and later expanded to cover out-of-pocket costs for nursing students. Each step brought them closer to a simple realization: even the most motivated students can be derailed by an unexpected expense. 

The couple believes supporting students in these moments requires flexibility on their part—and trust. Rather than prescribing how dollars should be used, they allow the College to respond where the need is greatest. “Unless you’re on the inside, you don’t know who needs the money and what they need it for,” Blumen said. The couple matched their trust by something just as powerful: a willingness to give without recognition or condition. 

“We don’t think donations are about us,” she said. “When we give, we ask—where is the need?” The answer is clear from the thank-you notes the couple have received from scholarship recipients. “They could not believe that somebody they didn’t know cared about them,” Blumen recalled. “And from the donor side, we care enough about somebody we don’t know that we give.” 

It is a philosophy Acton summed up in a 2021 Foundation Focus article: “We believe in giving while living. To be able to see our gifts in action gives us a sense of doing good. And this is right in our own backyard. These are our neighbors.” 

For Blumen and Acton, success for their neighbors and the greater community means a future where the Student Essentials Fund is no longer needed. Until then, their gift ensures more students will have what they need—not someday, but today—to stay in school and succeed.