Legacy Giving

When you include a gift for Room to Read in your will…

Your generosity becomes the words that girls will use to express themselves and build lives of their own choosing. Your compassion becomes the stories that young learners will hold in their hearts and share with their own children. Most importantly, your thoughtfulness becomes a better life for every student, family, and community that we reach, both now and for years to come.

Your support is their success. Their triumph is your legacy.

 

Stories from our Legacy Community

"If you are looking for a way to have a profound, positive impact on global education, that costs you nothing now, I highly recommend including Room to Read in your will. It is the most impactful way to invest in a brighter future for all."

- Craig Herb, Room to Read supporter since 2007

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Stories from our Legacy Community

Establishing Your Legacy is Easy

With charitable gift planning, you can create a legacy gift that will extend your support for years to come. It's simple to structure your gift to maximize its benefits in a way that is most favorable to you, your loved ones and the organizations you choose.

For assistance please contact Caitlin Nagel, our Legacy Giving Manager, at [email protected] or follow the steps below.

Easy Guide to Include Room to Read in Your Will

To include Room to Read in your will you will need our address and charity registration number. Please see below for these details, including Room to Read’s recommended free will-writing service for your country, if we have one. If your country is not listed below, please use our United States information or reach out to [email protected] for more information.  

Creating a legacy gift allows you to designate your investment to the work that you are most passionate about. Most of our supporters choose to invest in our greatest need. Should you choose not to designate your investment, it will go toward Room to Read’s Future Fund, ensuring your gift is used for maximum possible impact as part of our operational reserves, strengthening our ability to execute our mission in an unpredictable future. This Fund enables organizational nimbleness and ensures protection against the unexpected, as well as financial flexibility to identify, test, and invest in new, even more efficient approaches to delivering our programs to the children who need them most.

United States 
EIN/Tax ID: 91-2003533 
Address: Room to Read, 465 California Street, Suite 1000, San Francisco, CA 94104 
Recommended will-writing service: FreeWill 

Australia & New Zealand  
ABN: 13 133 277 666 
Address: Room to Read Australia Limited, P.O. Box R1017, Royal Exchange, NSW, 1225 Australia 

Canada 
Charity BN: 85061 2417 RR0001 
Address: Room to Read Canada of 2405 Pine Street, P.O. Box 46877, Vancouver, BC V6J 3E9 

Hong Kong 
Registration Number: 1117869 
Address: Room to Read Hong Kong Ltd, Room to Read 87/F International Commerce Centre One Austin Road West Kowloon Hong Kong 
Recommended will-writing service: ForeverGift or call +852 5468 3635 

India 
Registration Number: TI22579
Address: D21 Corporate Park, Office No. 201E (B), 2nd Floor, Sector-21, Dwarka, New Delhi – 110075 

Singapore 
EIN/Tax ID: 91-2003533 
Address: Room to Read, 465 California Street, Suite 1000, San Francisco, CA 94104 

Switzerland 
Identification Number/TIN: CHE-237.755.163 
Address: Room to Read – Schweiz c/o First Names (Switzerland Ltd) Am Schanzengraben 25, PO Box 8022 Zurich   

United Kingdom 
Registration Number: 1125803 
Address: Room to Read UK Limited, Bracken House, 1 Friday Street, London, EC4M 9BT 

To designate Room to Read as a beneficiary you will need our address, listed under the previous question.  

If your account is held in the United States, you can plan your beneficiary designations through FreeWill.

Yes, please let us know so we can express our gratitude and welcome you into our Legacy Community. Email [email protected] to reach Caitlin Nagel, our Legacy Giving Manager.

Considering a gift in your will? Let us help you.

Please take a moment to complete the following form and our Legacy Giving Manager will be in touch to provide support.

Contact Us

[email protected]

 

To notify us of a gift or ask questions about Legacy Giving, please contact us.

Stories from our Legacy Community


Craig Herb
Craig, you have been involved with Room to Read from our earliest days, starting by volunteering in our San Francisco office. Have you always been involved in volunteering and giving back to the community? 

I can’t say that I always have. My resume is littered with odd jobs, fits and starts, and some serendipity along the way. The work ethic I formed early was mixed with some luck that found me at Microsoft in my twenties, which is where I spent most of my career.  

I feel that life started to get most interesting for me as I began to be exposed to some of the world’s most complex challenges as I traveled throughout Asia and Central America, in some of the places Room to Read works. While I did encounter crushing poverty and sadness, the part that I didn’t expect was the incredible tenacity of the human spirit in some of the most under-resourced places that I visited.  

What struck me most was the yearning for opportunity, which was continually found synonymous with education.  This was oftentimes pursued not for personal gain, but to support their family and their community. It was so different from what I was used to in my own culture which tended to prioritize the individual. It was surprising and touching, and I was moved by so much of what I saw that it helped me redefine what I thought community should be and what relationships should look like. 

It was then that I started to be challenged by the Albert Schweitzer quote: “At that point in life where your talent meets the needs of the world, that is where God wants you to be.” My world revolving singularly around Microsoft started to then seem a bit small and unfulfilling while my career and many of my other influences were brightly illuminating the necessity of education; education for all. 

When did you first hear about Room to Read and how did you first get involved? 

Given what I was seeing, it was exciting for me to start thinking about the next chapter in my life. I found Room to Read through some quick research and immediately saw that it checked a lot of boxes for myself and my wife, Brenda. She is a teacher, so education was tremendously important to her, and the gender piece spoke to both of us in a big way. 

Working at Microsoft gave me the opportunity to be surrounded by so many smart people from all different walks of life. I quickly understood that education was the great equalizer and to deny someone an education because of their gender or where they were born, to limit their opportunity and potential in that way, was something I found unjust and hard to reconcile.  

This culminated in me spending nine months volunteering at Room to Read’s San Francisco office, during which time I got sucked into all the great things Room to Read was doing and, equally as important, how they were doing them. After leaving San Francisco to return back to my home in Raleigh, I had a great desire to continue my work with Room to Read, which is how I wound up founding Room to Read’s volunteer chapter in Washington, DC.  

Frederick Buechner defines vocation as the place where “your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” I felt like this was the first time I had the opportunity to apply my talents creatively to intersect this “deep hunger.” 

What drew you in and made you feel committed to Room to Read and the work that we do? 

My experience with non-profits is that oftentimes “the closer you get the less you like.”  My experience with Room to Read was just the opposite.  A rare mix of a spot-on mission, data-driven focus, and a people-centric methodology lured me into supporting the organization any way I could. For 11 years I volunteered, advocated, and fundraised for Room to Read through my work with the DC Chapter, and my wife Brenda and I have happily invested financially as well.  

Room to Read has always pushed the envelope in terms of challenging the standards of what the world is and what it can be. They have continued with bold thinking in terms of integrating their programming into government curriculums to ensure sustainability and growth, and they have also demonstrated how education is the solution to so many of the world’s problems, like climate change, conflict, and poor health. They impressed me as a true learning company; one continually open to improving.  

What made you want to include Room to Read in your will?  

As our two children are now grown, with families and lives of their own, we realized that they are far less in need of our support than the millions of children around the world who still lack access to quality education.  In reviewing our will, it became logical and exciting for us to include a future gift for Room to Read. Through this experience, we realized anew that our support is intrinsically tied to the success of young learners around the world and that their success was truly the legacy that Brenda and I valued.  

Why did you choose to use our free bequest tool to create your will and what was your experience like using it? 

As Brenda and I talked about what this new will might prioritize, we realized that our will was surprisingly not very complicated. Using Room to Read’s free bequest tool through FreeWill made the process both simple and free, which are two words I like! 

Why do you feel that education is a critical investment for the future? 

There are probably 1,000 different ways I can answer this question, but the one that comes to mind the quickest is the closest to my heart. I think about the word “agency” a lot. To me, this ability to make choices, identify goals, and act upon them is so important and is something that Room to Read specifically teaches as part of their Girls’ Education Program. I was understanding more each day all the pressure and mixed messages girls experience, both here in the US and around the world, wondering, how do they find their voice?  Without education, I saw that girls faced outdated thinking that minimizes their importance, opportunities, and yes – their agency.  

How would you recommend others, who feel similarly, support this important work? 

If you value education for all and envision a world where illiteracy and gender inequality are problems of the past, to me there is no better investment than Room to Read. If you have the means, I encourage you to make a reoccurring donation of any amount – it is a wonderful way to provide crucial funding for children’s education every month. But, if you are looking for a way to have a profound, positive impact on global education, that costs you nothing now, I highly recommend including Room to Read in your will. It is the most effective way to invest in a brighter future for all and with Room to Read offering supporters a free tool to create or update their will, I found it to be very rewarding and surprisingly easy.  

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