Eagle Rock Graduate Higher Education Fund Archives

#GivingTuesday Donations Offer a Boost and Benefit for Eagle Rock Graduates

Now in its eighth year, “Giving Tuesday” is the highly successful movement to promote an international day of charitable giving during the holidays. Here at Eagle Rock, it offers the possibility of being a boon for our school’s graduates, who leave our fold fully engaged in their own education and in search of successful and fulfilling futures which often involve further education and/or technical training.

Originally called “Cyber Giving Monday,” this nonprofit-focused effort urges patrons and donors alike to use the Internet to make charitable contributions to worthy organizations as a different approach to taking advantage of online holiday gift purchases. The year after it launched in 2011, the movement was renamed “Giving Tuesday,” and moved a day later to avoid competition with Cyber Monday.

We’re unabashedly and gratefully grabbing onto this altruistic gift-giving opportunity by encouraging members of the Eagle Rock Community to contribute on this day. When giving to us, the proceeds from such generous gifts go directly into support for our graduating students through the Eagle Rock Graduate Higher Education Fund.

Last week, Jeff Liddle, our Head of School, released a letter to supporters, urging them to continue this new tradition of giving during the holidays, and especially on Giving Tuesday. Here’s some of what Jeff expressed: Continue reading…

Annual Estes Park Duck Race on May 4 Benefits our Graduate Education Fund

Here’s an interesting fact about the upcoming Estes Park Duck Race — a benefit event that helps to raise funds for among other things, our Graduate Higher Education Fund. What used to be called the Rotary of Estes Park Duck Race has been elevated in status to a genuine festival.

Now known as the Estes Park Rotary Duck Race Festival, the daylong event maintains its tradition — dating back 30 years — in which participants launch thousands of little yellow duckies downstream in hopes of winning from among hundreds of prizes. The grand prize is $5,000 in cash, with the following three winners picking up destination vacations at national parks. In addition, hundreds of prizes from Estes Park merchants and others will be handed out at the finish line.

However, the real winners of this duck float and fest are the benefiting organizations and charities whose supporters “adopt out” the rubber racing ducks, with 95 percent of each duck’s adoption fee going directly to locally-based organizations, including Eagle Rock. In the past three decades, more than $2.4 million has been Continue reading…

It’s #GivingTuesday and Eagle Rock is the Perfect Recipient for Your Gift

The leftovers have been warmed up — and warmed up again — and there’s finally room in the refrigerator for regular groceries. Nearly everybody’s back at school or work following the Thanksgiving holidays. Black Friday is a memory, Cyber Monday wrapped up a few hours ago and we’re now well into Giving Tuesday.

What is Giving Tuesday? Often touted as #GivingTuesday for those aficionados of hashtags, this 24-hour period — celebrated the Tuesday after Thanksgiving — is designated as an international day of charitable giving at exactly the time many families and corporations are focusing on their end-of-year donations. Donors often turn to their own communities for such offerings, and for those supporters, friends and alumni of Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center, we can think of no group that would be more grateful than our own Graduate Higher Education Fund recipients.

Back in the 1997 when our school was still in its infancy, we realized that while our new graduates had accomplished great feats in their personal growth, maturity and education, they were often faced with insurmountable financial needs — especially when it came to Continue reading…

Higher Ed Fund Offers Eagle Rock Grads a Leg Up on Their Future

Editor’s Note: Giving Tuesday is a global day of charity that follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Below, Eagle Rock Head of School Jeff Liddle presents a case for friends of Eagle Rock School to participate in today’s charitable event by focusing their end-of-year giving to our graduates — young people who many thought would never graduate from high school. Donations of any size are gratefully welcomed and 100 percent of these gifts go to support the higher education of our graduates. Gifts are tax-deductible and donors receive a letter that can be used for tax purposes.

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Few things bring me more joy than handing an Eagle Rock School diploma to a graduate. Sharing our Human Performance Center with mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, cousins and grandparents, aunts, uncles and sponsors is a great honor. We celebrate and hold space for renewed hope. Hope of a future once seemingly unattainable.

Three times a year at graduation we pause. We cry. We laugh. We celebrate. Three times a year Eagle Rock grads get to say, “Yes, I did it!” This, despite all the odds. Despite the doubters. Despite tremendous obstacles. All Who Dare is more than a cliché. Our graduates are living, breathing examples of it. They dare.

Graduates walk across the Human Performance Center stage with hope, plans, and a solid high school experience that launches them into the future. Unfortunately, the daunting reality is this: That next step — the pursuit of higher education — is often financially out of reach.

That’s why I’m reaching out today, on Giving Tuesday. As the cost of higher education continues to rise, these graduates’ financial needs have never been greater. At Eagle Rock, we send forth students who have the desire and are prepared to Continue reading…

Graduate Higher Ed Funding Grows With Each Rubber Duck Purchase

Whoo-hoo — it’s Duck Race season! We’re very blessed to have such an incredible base of support in the extended Eagle Rock community and we’re super excited to kick off this year’s race.

And when it comes to fundraisers for our school’s Graduate Higher Education Fund, what could be more festive than a Rubber Duck race? Why, you can’t even say rubber ducky without smiling. So, when you’re offered the opportunity to make a contribution to our Graduate Higher Education Fund — and potentially win valuable prizes — it becomes an easy decision.

Estes Park Duck Race Mascot Quilten T. Canvasback visits with Eagle Rock students and staff. — Estes Park Duck Race mascot, Quilten T. Canvasback, visits with Eagle Rock students and staff in advance of the 2017 Estes Park Duck Race.

Which probably goes a long way in explaining why the Estes Park Duck Race is such a huge success. Held each year on the first Saturday in May, this event has raised more than $2 million for local charities and organizations since the first event back in 1989. And among the big beneficiaries of the festivities has been Eagle Rock School’s Graduate Higher Education Fund.

The 2017 edition of the Duck Race & Festival will be held on Saturday, May 6, and here’s how it works and why you may want to considering adopting a duck or two or three or more: Continue reading…

Acquiring an Appreciation of Eagle Rock’s Graduate Higher Education Fund

In Eagle Rock’s early years, students would graduate in proper circumstance — if not pomp — only to face seemingly impossible financial barriers in their efforts to move on. Having earned their diplomas and eagerly looking forward to grander goals, these confident students often found their promising futures thwarted by monetary constraints that prevented them from financing further education.

What it came down to was students who wanted to go to college — and they could get into college — but they just didn’t have the support, according to Robert Burkhardt, our founder and former Head of School.

By the summer of 1997, Burkhardt and Dick Herb, who was then our director of operations, came up with the beginnings of a plan. Herb found some money in the budget that enabled Burkhardt to bequeath a thousand dollars to one graduate.

But it quickly became obvious that all of our graduates deserved a financial opportunity, so the next trimester, we granted the same award to all graduates. Nice sentiment, but in order to make the fund sustainable, we had to come up with a fund-raising operation.

We began to hire the school out for Eagle Serve once a trimester, and then became involved with the Estes Park Duck Race organization. And volunteers began sending out letters to people, asking for monetary support.

When Judy Gilbert, Eagle Rock’s first director of curriculum passed away, the American Honda Education Corporation donated Continue reading…