Endowed Scholarship Fund — THE TAYLOR LEAD FOUNDATION (Copy) (Copy) (Copy) (Copy)

The arithmetic, first

You are going to do this math anyway. Here it is.

An endowed fund is invested, and a fixed percentage of it is spent each year. The rest stays. At a 4% draw — the conservative standard — the relationship is simple:

$25,000Endowed, once

→

$1,000Awarded to an Idaho scholar-athlete, every year, forever

Figures on this page assume a 4% annual spending rate set by board policy. A different rate changes every number here, which is why they are stated as approximate. The principal is not spent.

What this fund is not. The Change Make*Hers Gala funds iWIN Sports — grants, camps, clinics, the work of getting girls into the game. This fund is separate and restricted: it exists only to name and pay scholar-athletes. A gift here cannot be spent on anything else, and that restriction is the point of having it.

What the fund pays for

Two awards, doing two different jobs.

Idaho’s go-on rate — the share of high school graduates who enroll in anything after — is a long-standing state concern. Getting a student to enroll and getting them to finish are separate problems, so we fund them separately.

Track one · Access

The LEAD Scholar Award

Broad and immediate. Thirty-two awards a year at full statewide scale — ten in each region, plus two at Mountain Home, which is part of the program every year without exception.

Award: $1,000, and $2,500 at Mountain Home
Term: One year, moving to two
Scale: 32 scholars a year, statewide from 2028

The job: move the go-on rate. Remove the specific, unglamorous costs that stop a student enrolling at all.

Track two · Persistence

The four-year renewable award

Narrow and deep. A small number of students carried across the whole degree — $20,000 to one person, paid over four years, renewed on continued enrollment.

Award: $5,000 a year
Term: Four years, renewable
Scale: Three to four new scholars a year

The job: move the graduation rate. An award that renews is a four-year relationship with a check-in built into it — which is also the only reliable way we will ever know what happened to our scholars.

Both tracks are built in phases. The access award is what exists today; the renewable award begins once the fund can carry it without borrowing against a future year.

Named gift opportunities

Every one of these carries a name for as long as the fund exists.

Yours, your family’s, your company’s, or someone you want remembered. Named awards are made in perpetuity, and gifts at every level here can be pledged over three or five years.

$500,000$100,000 a year for five years

Endows one four-year renewable award, every year, forever.A named scholar receiving $20,000 across their degree, in perpetuity. The single most consequential gift available here.

$250,000$50,000 a year for five years

Endows ten LEAD Scholar Awards a year, forever.A named region, or a named cohort carrying your family’s name across a generation of Idaho scholars.

$100,000$20,000 a year for five years

Endows four LEAD Scholar Awards a year, forever.

$62,000$12,400 a year for five years

Endows one Mountain Home award, forever.The larger award, at the school where this began in 2015.

Where most people start$25,000$5,000 a year for five years

Endows one LEAD Scholarship in your name, every year, forever.Reachable for a family, a small business, a class reunion, or a group of former teammates going in together. One named Idaho scholar-athlete a year, for as long as this Foundation exists.

$10,000$2,000 a year for five years

Cornerstone gift.Recognized permanently as part of the fund’s founding, without a named award attached.

Any amountOne-time or recurring

Builds the corpus.Every dollar is invested, and every dollar keeps working after it is given.

Give to the fund Discuss a named gift

Prefer to send a check? Mailing instructions are below. Gifts of stock, donor advised fund grants and bequests are all welcome here and are often the most efficient way to give at these levels — see planned giving.

By check

The memo line is not a formality. It is the restriction.

A check made out to the Foundation with a blank memo line becomes an unrestricted gift and lands in the general fund. Writing the fund name in the memo is what legally directs it to the endowment and keeps it out of everything else.

Where to send it

Everything a check needs, in order.

Payable to: The Taylor LEAD Foundation
Memo line: Endowed Scholarship Fund
Mail to: The Taylor LEAD Foundation
P.O. Box 8744
Boise, Idaho 83707
EIN: 99-2465893

If this is a named gift, write to us first

Naming intent does not fit on a memo line, and we would rather get the wording right with you than guess from a check. One email settles it, and the check can follow.

If you are pledging over several years

A pledge needs a short letter stating the total, the schedule and the fund — not just a first check. We will send you one to sign, and it protects both of us by putting the commitment in writing without making it binding on your estate.

Sending something substantial

Use certified mail if it would worry you to send it any other way. Courier services cannot deliver to a P.O. Box, so if your bank or advisor wants to send by FedEx or UPS, write to us and we will arrange a street address.

What happens next

You will receive a written acknowledgment and a tax receipt showing the gift and its restriction. If a named award is attached, you will also get confirmation of exactly how it will appear.

Gifts of stock, donor advised fund grants and wire transfers all work differently and are often more efficient at these levels. Email us for instructions, or see planned giving.

The goal, stated honestly

A fully endowed program needs $3.75 million. We are raising the first million.

We would rather show you the whole number than let you discover later that the goal never covered the plan. Here is what each stage actually buys.

First milestone $875,000

The 32-award statewide access program becomes permanent. From this point, no LEAD Scholar is named because a fundraiser went well — they are named because the fund exists.

Phase one · raising now $1,000,000

Endows the statewide access program and begins the four-year renewable track. Produces roughly $40,000 a year, every year — more than twice what the 2026 program awarded.

Fully endowed $3.75M

Both tracks at steady state: 32 access awards on two-year terms, plus four new four-year renewable scholars every year. Roughly $150,000 awarded annually, in perpetuity.

For scale: the 2026 cycle awarded $17,000 to 14 scholars. Phase one alone would more than double that permanently, and take it off the fundraising calendar entirely.

Whose names this carries

The scholarship was already a memorial. This makes it a permanent one.

Charles Taylor served twenty-seven years in the United States Air Force. Alice Taylor spent more than thirty years as a paraprofessional in special education in the Mountain Home school district. Together they raised three children on one idea: that hard work in the classroom and hard work on the field were never two separate things.

In 2015, at the Mountain Home High School Athletic Hall of Fame dinner, their children announced a scholarship in their names. Alice has since died. The scholarship carries her forward, and every year it does that on money somebody had to go out and raise.

An endowment is the version of this that does not depend on any of us still being here to run it.

Gifts in honor or memory

Endowment gifts are frequently made in someone’s name. A named award inside a fund that is itself a memorial is a particular kind of thing, and we will help you get the wording right.

How named awards work

Your name appears on the award, on the recipient’s letter, and in our annual reporting — every year the award is made. You will know who received it.

Before you give

What happens to the money after it leaves you.

It is restricted, permanently

Gifts to this fund can only be used to name and pay scholar-athletes. Not operations, not programs, not the gala. That restriction is recorded when the gift is made and it binds every future board.

The principal is not spent

Only the annual draw is spent, at a rate set by board policy. That is what makes the word “forever” on this page an accounting fact rather than a figure of speech.

It is professionally managed

The fund is invested under a written investment policy adopted by the board, with oversight from the Finance Committee.

You will see what it did

Named-award donors receive annual reporting on the scholars their fund supported. The Foundation’s wider results are published quarterly. See the ledger.

Start a conversation

A gift at this level should begin with a conversation, not a form.

Tell us what you are considering and we will show you exactly what it would fund, what it would be called, and how it could be structured across a few years. If you are exploring rather than deciding, say so and we will treat it that way.

Email Angela directly Give online Give through your estate

This page is information, not advice. Endowment figures assume a 4% annual spending rate and are illustrative. We are not attorneys, accountants or financial advisors, and any gift involving stock, a donor advised fund or your estate should be reviewed by your own professional advisors.

The Taylor LEAD Foundation · P.O. Box 8744, Boise, Idaho 83707 · 501(c)(3) · EIN 99-2465893 · hello@taylorleadscholarship.com · 208.477.1522

Right now, this scholarship starts from zero every single year.