MYCRMS
Virtual TourWays to Give and FAQ
At the center of CRMS’s transformational educational experience lies a strong spirit of philanthropy. Your giving makes a profound difference. Below are a few of the ways you can make a gift to support the students, faculty, families and community that make CRMS such a remarkable institution.
The CRMS Annual Fund
Make your check payable to CRMS and send to:
Colorado Rocky Mountain School
Development Office
500 Holden Way
Carbondale, CO 81623
Please include in the memo line: CRMS Annual Fund. Also don’t forget to include your preferred phone number and/or email should we need to contact you about your gift.
Wire transfers can be made directly from your bank account to CRMS’s account. Please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development, for account details.
We gladly accept stock transfers via Charles Schwab. Please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development, or Segall Bryant & Hamill (303-312-5167) if you have questions about making a gift by electronic transfer of stocks. Your broker will require the following information to expedite your stock transfer:
DTC: #0164
CRMS Charles Schwab Account Number: 1604-6942
Please include the donor’s name for reference.
Once you’ve made a decision to make a stock transfer, please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development, with the number of shares and the name of the stock being transferred. Privacy laws prohibit our broker from sharing your contact information, so contacting us ensures the successful completion of your gift!
Capital & Endowed Giving
Make checks payable to CRMS and send to:
Colorado Rocky Mountain School
Development Office
500 Holden Way
Carbondale, CO 81623
Please include in the memo line: Annual Fund. Also don’t forget to include your preferred phone number and/or email should we need to contact you about your gift.
Wire transfers can be made directly from your bank account to CRMS’s account. Please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development, (Subject: Wire Transfer Question) for account details.
We gladly accept stock transfers via Charles Schwab. Please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development (subject: Wire Transfer Question) or Segall Bryant & Hamill (303-312-5167) if you have questions about making a gift by electronic transfer of stocks. Your broker will require the following information to expedite your stock transfer:
DTC: #0164
CRMS Charles Schwab Account Number: 1604-6942
Please include the donor’s name for reference.
Once you’ve made a decision to make a stock transfer, please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development, with the number of shares and the name of the stock being transferred. Privacy laws prohibit our broker from sharing your contact information, so contacting us ensures the successful completion of your gift!
Making your gift to create or add to an existing Endowed Fund is as simple as writing at check, but because your gift leaves a legacy, let’s start a conversation about the impact you’d like your gift to have. Call Heath Hignight, Director of Development, to get started.
970-963-2562
Asset, Trust & Estate Giving
- A Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) is a withdrawal from an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) that is sent directly to an organization such as CRMS. In other words, the funds don’t pass through your hands. You instruct your IRA custodian to send the funds straight to CRMS. It’s a great way to make an impactful gift, and it may also have positive tax benefits!
- You are eligible if you are 70 1⁄2 or older (at the time of the donation).
- While reducing your taxes, you can support CRMS! Once you reach 70 1⁄2 you are required to withdraw funds annually from your IRA and report the distributions as income on your tax returns. So, if you’re required to withdraw $10,000 from your IRA, that may increase your income this year by $10,000. Keeping your taxable income lower may reduce the impact to certain tax credits and deductions, including Social Security and Medicare. It’s important to weigh these options with your financial advisor.
- You can transfer as much as $100,000 a year from your IRA to any combination of qualified charities, and none of that money would be taxed. And the limit is $100,000 a year per person - not per IRA.
- For a QCD to count towards your current year’s Required Minimum Distributions (RMD), the funds must come out of your IRA by your RMD deadline, generally Dec. 31. Recommendations are to reach out to your IRA adviser and/or financial advisor now.
- You can learn more about QCDs on the IRS website
For wiring instructions or any questions, please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development, at 970-963-2562 x130 or hhignight@crms.org .
- If you’ve already created an estate plan and named CRMS as a beneficiary of a will or life insurance policy, thank you! You can join the Holden Circle now:
- If you are considering making or updating an estate plan and may name CRMS as a beneficiary, you might have questions! The first step is to work with your attorney or estate planner to structure your estate and write your will so as to best carry out your wishes. CRMS cannot act as executor of a donor’s estate. Please remember, estate planning almost always require the services of an attorney or estate planning professional. If you’d like to discuss your ideas or intentions for benefiting CRMS through an estate gift, please call Heath Hignight, Director of Development. 970-963-2562
- If you are interested in learning more about how a charitable gift annuity, charitable remainder trust, charitable lead trust, or other giving vehicles may fit your needs, please contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development.
- Contact Heath Hignight, Director of Development, with a description of the item(s) you would like to give to the school. We will be happy to research the best way to utilize your in-kind gift.
Giving FAQ
You can give the gift of intellectual growth and curiosity. You can open the doors to original ideas, perspectives and creativity. You can change lives.
But before you do, you might have some questions! Below are a few of the most common questions we receive from donors before they make a gift. If you don’t see an answer to a question you have, please call or email and we’ll do our best to address your curiosities and queries.
Part of the mission of CRMS is to provide a learning environment in which students learn the value of contributing to their communities, and how to participate in the world we share. We believe that we make a better world for everyone when we give support to meaningful causes and purposes. When you make a gift to the CRMS Annual Fund, you’re helping students, faculty and families realize their educational and personal potential.
CRMS relies on giving for up to 15% of its annual operating budget. Careful stewardship of tuition and endowment revenue, together with support of the annual fund, makes it possible to care for our buildings, faculty, and the academic and active programs that set CRMS apart from other schools.
An educational community, like a sports team, thrives when everyone participates in a meaningful way. When everyone on the team plays their part, the whole team benefits: personal growth, reaching new milestones, and the sense of accomplishment that comes from sharing in a challenge. One star team member can’t bring success to the entire team.
The CRMS educational community is made up of parents and their families, alumni, faculty and staff, and trustees; all of them make up the team that makes it possible for education to take place. As a community, we thrive when everyone participates in a way that’s meaningful.
The participation of parents and families, faculty and staff, alumni and trustees in the Annual Fund makes a tremendous difference in the school year. Whether you make a one-time gift or a recurring monthly gift, it matters. Whether you give $5 or $50,000, it matters. Every gift matters.
Reaching 100% participation means that everyone is playing a meaningful role, sharing in a challenge that impacts hundreds of student lives every year.
Everyone who gives to the Annual Fund is showing up for students today.
Making an endowed gift is to express a belief in the future. Endowed gifts, whether they support arts, academics, or an active or team sport, provide a source of funding that lasts forever. For many people, making a gift to the Annual Fund to support scholarships today is meaningful; some want to ensure that scholarships will be there in the future, too, and choose to give an annual gift and also a special gift to an existing endowed fund or create a new endowed fund.
Endowed funds are carefully invested to generate an annual interest payout to CRMS. This payout is used to support the purpose for which the endowed fund was created. An endowed scholarship fund will provide funds every year—forever—to support scholarships. An endowed fund to support teacher training will provide funds every year—forever—that CRMS teachers will use to attend conferences or seminars. The original gift amount remains safe, guaranteeing it will generate funds every year—forever.
Would you like to see The Barn protected for All School Meetings forever? An endowed fund can make that possible. Maybe you’d like to ensure that every future student who deserves a scholarship or financial aid can receive that support. Endowed scholarships make that possible. The most important question to answer is: what’s your passion? And then start a conversation with us about how to realize your passion.
Estate and trust giving can enable you to make a more significant gift to CRMS than might normally be possible.
Often called planned giving, a bequest in a will or the gift of life insurance, charitable gift annuities, charitable remainder trusts, or retirement assets such as required minimum distributions from IRAs can help you make meaningful gifts while attaining other important financial and family goals. Tax benefits exist for many of these kinds of gifts, and can provide you with opportunities to make an impact on future generations of students and faculty. It’s important to seek advice from your legal or financial advisors about how you can make an estate or planned gift that makes the most sense for you and your family’s needs.
We honor those who make an estate gift with recognition in The Holden Circle, in reflection of sharing the vision of the Holdens that CRMS can make a difference in the lives of students—both now and in the future.
As CRMS entered the 2009-10 academic year, alumni, parents, and trustees felt it was time to bring the state of the campus and its academic programs forward with some overdue repairs, maintenance, and improvements. Six decades of Colorado weather—and teenage high school students—can inflict a lot of wear and tear! The Forging the Future, Preserving the Past campaign reached an ambitious goal of raising $10 million from generous alumni, parents, and private and family foundations to improve the school’s instructional spaces and technology, renovate existing dorms and build new ones, and strengthen academic and active programs with new resources. You can read more about what this important campaign achieved here.
As we approach our 70th anniversary, CRMS is faced with a rapidly changing educational landscape framed within a global context. In 2018, the CRMS Board of Trustees created a committee to explore how the next 70 years of the school may look in that global context. Key questions explored include:
- What educational experiences will future graduates rely upon in adulthood?
- What is the path a CRMS graduate travels that prepares them for a complex and rapidly changing world?
The trustee committee completed its work on Future Path in the 20-21 academic year, producing a vision for the evolution of CRMS educational traditions over the next 20-30 years. The process revealed areas of needed investment that CRMS must make for the benefit of the next generation of faculty, students and their families. These areas of need will form the basis of the next CRMS capital campaign.