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Our invocation was offered by Tim H. President Katie was the only female member in attendance, with too few of us gathered to hear her recap of the year (my opinion). We were reminded of no meeting on July 9th as we will be busy enough next week with the Habitat build on July 8th and the Duck Derby on the 9th. Jamie L. was handing out flyers for the peach sale, but he encouraged us to first attend to selling our Lucky Duck Derby tickets, as we still have more of those unsold than we should at this point. We received our vests that the club was awarded by our Rotary District and Katie put on one for all of us to see how it looks.  There was a Rotary Minute Plus Quiz which saw us answer only one of the questions about our outgoing president correctly. To recap, Katie was on a Group Study Exchange Team to Australia in 1997-98, her middle name is Nell, and she first served as President of our club in 2016-17 (Ryan W. knew when she was our president). When Katie joined our club, she was already employed by Lake Region Healthcare. Finally, as to the only non-Katie related question, the correct answer to what local project supported by The Rotary Foundation was not mentioned in the last e-Rounds -- it was the contribution made to the capital fund drive for the Humane Society. Keith O. checked off the last six spots on his expiring brag and fine card, relating the escalating costs of a missed toll road charge while in Austria but also celebrating Kim and his hosting of cousin's camp for seven of his grandchildren and one of brother Guy's. Dave Johnson announced he has always wanted to and is going to take a Mississippi River cruise from St. Louis, Missouri to St. Paul that will last a week. Matt S. contributed for missing a few meetings while both Hal L. and this writer congratulated Katie for providing great leadership to our club this past year; I also reported that Deb M. was attending the Rotary International Convention in Calgary and having a great time. Steve A. was happy to report that his wife will be back in Fergus Falls soon and Brian T. told us that Cande had arrived home safely. Katie then talked about and showed us (through a well-organized PowerPoint presentation) what our club has been about this last year, noting that our visioning work last year answered the questions of what we stand for and how are we known with 1) having a lot of fun while accomplishing projects locally and beyond; 2) reemerging as the service club to belong to -- the one people WANT to be in; and 3) doing good work in the community and in the world. Our club motto became "Connecting, Transforming and Sustaining through Service, Friendship and Acceptance. In the area of participant engagement, 80% of our members participated in at least one service project, we held four social events, we used official Rotary materials on our website, on social media and in print, and incoming President Ryan W. attended Presidential Elect Training. We increased our impact by giving at least $3,000 to the annual fund of The Rotary Foundation, hosting an inbound exchange student and completing ten service projects: distributing dictionaries and Andy & Elmer and Josh the Otter books, participating in Salvation Army bell ringing, staffing concessions for Otter Orations, doing ditch clean-up, helping with the Lake Region run, hosting the magic show and raising funds through our peach and rose sales as well as the Lucky Duck Derby. There were four media stories about our club, and we also sponsored two RYLA students. We increased our ability to adapt by developing a strategic plan based on the visioning session, got our website up to date and have been keeping it and our social media postings current. We had 37 speakers during the year, went on two tours (Otter Cove and The Mill Hotel), enjoyed three Christmas performances, had three club meetings and one virtual meeting (due to weather). We have much to celebrate, benefiting from the teamwork the board and members have displayed, a rich legacy of 100+ years of service, a vision and actin plan for the future, another incoming exchange student, an international water project and some Foundation milestones. With respect to The Rotary Foundation (TRF), during the 2023-24 Rotary year (the last year audited figures are available), TRF made 485 district grants of $30 million: 106 disaster response grants of $4 million, 1,287 global grants of $72 million and one program of scale grant of $2 million. TRF has consistently received the highest, four-star rating from Charity Navigator, with 88% of all funds contributed to it used to support program awards and operations. As part of her remarks, Katie also presented Mark Bring with his Paul Harris Fellow recognition. Thanks Mark, for your support of TRF. Incoming President Ryan W. congratulated Kaie for a great year and presented her with a plaque and past president's badge (both showing her two different years of service) in recognition of her leadership. |
