Sue Ducat believes that philanthropy is important in all forms: monetary donations and volunteer work.
“I encourage other people to find causes that move them and get involved, not just writing a check, but also see how they can help serve, engage with [an] organization,” the North Bethesda resident said.
After a career as a public broadcast TV producer, then a communications director for various nonprofit organizations, Ducat became a philanthropist. She worked with Jewish Community Foundation to launch a philanthropic project in memory of her late husband, Stanley Cohen, who died in 2020 of COVID-19.
Ducat originally thought to dedicate a COVID-19 emergency fund to him, “but that really wasn’t about him.” Cohen had been a philanthropist in the Jewish community.
“He was very active in various Jewish community activities of all kinds,” Ducat said, adding that her late husband had been deeply involved in his synagogue, local Jewish day school boards, community boards and the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.
“Of course, it was less about giving money than giving his time,” Ducat said. “And then after he died, I realized I wanted to do both.”
In 2022, Ducat created a scholarship fund in partnership with BBYO in hopes of sending Jewish students to Central Europe to observe and learn about Europe’s Jewish heritage and history during the Holocaust. But BBYO hadn’t yet resumed those trips post-COVID.
Currently, Ducat’s scholarship fund allows a Jewish teen, preferably one who doesn’t attend a Jewish day school, to explore their Jewish identity and “learn about their Jewishness” in a summer camp setting through BBYO’s International Kallah program, she said. The scholarship is now in its third year.
“I get letters from the kids who’ve gotten [the scholarships] and they’re just amazing,” Ducat said. “They’ve said, ‘I really didn’t understand what it was to be Jewish and this was such a life-changing experience, so thank you.’ And that makes me feel so good.”
She hopes that her fund will eventually expand to include travel to see Europe’s concentration camps and other historic sites, as Cohen had been passionate about educating future generations about the Holocaust.
“He just felt very strongly that the lessons of the Holocaust have to be retold the way the Passover story has to be told over and over to make sure nobody thinks it didn’t really happen,” Ducat said. “We’re hearing some of that now; that’s Holocaust denial. So I wanted to make sure that that desire of [Cohen’s] didn’t go away.”
Ducat has also been involved with the Capital Jewish Museum since before its 2023 opening.
In 2024, she approached Dr. Beatrice Gurwitz of the Capital Jewish Museum about adding more storytelling and supported the museum’s initiative to tell the stories of Jewish federal workers and collect artifacts illustrating this history.
“Right now, it’s a small pilot project,” Ducat explained.
The Washington, D.C., museum showcased a rotation of display cases containing artifacts from Jewish federal workers, she said.
“They usually shine a spotlight on a worker, [who] they were and what they accomplished,” Ducat said. “Hopefully in the future, CJM will consider creating a full-blown exhibit on the subject of Jewish federal workers.
“So much of the Jewish existence in Washington in the last 80 or so years is tied to the federal government, as people came to Washington,” Ducat added. “They came because they wanted to serve. In the 19th century and early 20th, it was Jewish natives [who] weren’t necessarily in government; they were starting stores or were lawyers or [did] other trades.”
Around the time of the New Deal and into the 1960s, Jewish people came to the D.C. area with the purpose of public service.
“There’s so many people,” Ducat said. “There are famous people, but there are so many lesser, untold stories of discoveries that we take for granted right now in government that could be tied back to some Jewish federal worker who was just doing their job.”
This desire to support telling those stories was in memory of Cohen, who had worked for the United States Department of Education for more than 40 years. Ducat has also supported the museum’s capital campaign and created an endowment for education: the Sue Ducat and Stanley Cohen z”l Memorial Fund.
For Ducat’s family growing up in New York City, attending a synagogue wasn’t as important as being aware of their Jewish heritage. Both of Ducat’s parents had escaped the Holocaust.
It was meeting Cohen in her early 30s that prompted Ducat to get involved in the local Jewish community: “Synagogue was an important part of his life and so was Jewish community action, so I soaked all that up like a sponge.”
Ducat became an active member of Adas Israel Congregation in D.C. There, she has served on the board of Anne’s Place, a nonprofit organization that provides housing and services to formerly unhoused residents, since 1990. Ducat is also a longtime volunteer with Adas Israel’s chevra kadisha committee, which supports community members dealing with death and mourning.
“Although I’m not as active anymore as I used to be because I moved farther out, I’m still very tied to the Adas community and I’m forever grateful,” Ducat said.
She added that the synagogue community was a refuge for her while she was mourning Cohen.
“The daily minyan was there for me and they helped me get through a difficult time,” Ducat said.
Ducat has served on various other committees at Adas Israel over the years and even had her adult bat mitzvah there. She’s been “very involved” in D.C.’s Jewish community for almost four decades, which she finds rewarding.
“It’s less about philanthropy than it is about being active in the community,” she said.
