RCO Club Assembly
Bulletin
January 20, 2020
Rod started the meeting at 6:30 (30 seconds early) with a toast to the Queen and Canada.
George F: Anthem
Amin: Grace
Mahendra: 15 members in attendance plus 2 coming; 17 in total arrived for dinner
Announcements
Speakers Series
Jean: Everyone present has been given tickets to sell. Posters are available if you are attending an event and can make an announcement. Posters can also be attached to community mailboxes, if you have one in your neighbourhood. We have about 700 tickets to sell. We want to see bums in seats.
Rae: The more tickets you sell, the greater the value to our sponsors. They like to support events where all the seats are full. Selling 400 tickets is doable; 500 would be nice; 600 is our target.
Ask for the order: if they do not want to be a sponsor, ask them if they would like two tickets; if they cannot use the tickets themselves, ask them if they have contacts whom we should approach.
We need the will and the sense of responsibility to our club: This is our premier funding event.
Mahendra: This year we are selling tickets on our website (
www.rotaryclubofoakville.ca). We have all the things we need; it is up to all of us to promote the event and sell tickets.
Lama: Use your social media contacts; read Beverley McLachlin’s book and the passion to promote her talk on April 28th will come.
Mahendra: Contact all your friends, especially the lawyers. They will not want to miss it.
Paul Harris Award Dinner
Mike: The PHAD is next Wednesday, January 29th. All four Rotary clubs in Oakville are participating. We have 19 members and guests from our club signed up. If you have not signed up yet, please do soon—the cut-off for registration is January 24—and bring your significant other.
Rod: Just to reiterate: Registration closes on January 24. Last year we had 20 tickets purchased in the 3 days leading up to the event, and this will not be possible this year. Please book soon to avoid disappointment, and to help Mike – events are a lot more difficult to organize if you don’t know how many people will attend.
Induction Ceremony: Mitch Sabsabi
Rod read the ceremony welcoming Mitch as our newest member. George F was Mitch’s sponsor and attached his Rotary pin and handed him his Rotary name badge.
Mitch said a few words about how he had now fulfilled his obligations to his family and wanted to now fulfill his obligations to the community.
Rod: We are holding this meeting on the traditional land of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
The agenda for this evening will be to review each committee’s report and to review the Treasurer’s report.
Rod: Rania will be undergoing a transition away from the Membership Committee; Dana is preparing to write a test this evening. I will be speaking later for both.
Presentations
George V: Club Services
George: The program committee has done a good job: The program is full right through June 30 with the last two sessions being a bit fluid.
Speakers now get a pen with a certificate scrolled around its barrel.
Mahendra: For International Committee
These are the projects that International has been doing.
The committee has spent about $13K; our budget is $40K and we have other potential projects in progress. We have a brochure for the Water Hippo project, which makes life easier for women who must travel miles for water.
Mike: Community Service
The committee has been working well. We have approved several projects; several more are under review and some have been declined.
We will be re-engaging with Halton Granters Round Table at their next meeting to find projects where we can be proactive.
We gave plaques to last year’s donation recipients and will continue this year.
Rod: For Membership Committee
Rod: Membership committee is doing a good job: they have a clear process in place for bringing on new members and have added two new members in the past month.
George V: As a member of the Membership Committee, I am happy to say that I do not recall working on a committee with so much enthusiasm and that has made so much progress.
Rod: Rania will be transitioning away from the Membership Committee. We are hoping that she will continue to be a Board member; Larry may be taking over as the committee chair.
Rod: For Youth Service
Rod: Python’s Pit, which was scheduled for May, may be postponed this year; only two people applied, perhaps due to the teachers’ strike, and many extracurricular activities are not happening.
The bursaries project that we share with RCOT and RCOW are going well. Schools have been contacted; they are actively referring candidates to apply. March 27 is the cut-off date.
Rod: For Marketing/PR
Rod: Dana is very happy with her progress this year, and so am I. She is currently actively involved in promoting the Speakers Series.
Ralf: Indigenous Committee
Ralf: The Indigenous Committee has been primarily involved in research, mainly in indigenous education. We have offered scholarships at the University of Sudbury and at Six Nations.
The winner at Sudbury was just been chosen and will be informed very soon.
We are also investigating indigenous water supply and are looking at how we can help.
Mahendra: Treasurer’s Report
Mahendra: Notes on the Treasurer’s report:
- The Oakville Golf Club made a small error when billing us for the Christmas party. They have already adjusted the invoice.
- The Oakville Golf Club (OGC) made an error in their 2019 billings to us. They billed us for about $1,000 less that the actual amount incurred. The Board expressed a willingness to repay OGC for this easy-to-make error, a simple transposition of two numbers.
- The Club lost $600 last year on dinners. The Oakville Golf Club bills us whenever we give them the number of members and guests we expect, who then do not show. We get charged for the no-shows.
- The Charitable Trust received a donation of $106K from the RCO Foundation.
- We will have a big cash outlay in the spring when bursaries come due, accrued at $20K
- The audit bill will also need to be accrued.
Rod: Any questions?
Ralf: Why are guests not invited to Club Assembly, since it is a good time to learn about Rotary and what we do?
Rod: The debate about club activities can sometimes become very involved; guests may lose interest in the detailed questions and answers. Having said that, we have had the right mix of interesting questions and answers today, and if that continues for the next couple of Club Assemblies I would recommend to Mike that he reassesses inviting guests next year.
Rod: Since it is already after 8pm, we can skip Happy Bucks and Fines.
Ralf: Happy bucks and fines are a fun activity and should be done, perhaps much earlier in the meeting, not just at the end.
Rod asked members whether they were happy to stay for happy bucks and fines, and they were
Mike: Some great trivia questions involving our coinage. (Well done, Mike. This is a fun event.)
Rod: Next meetings:
Paul Harris Award Dinner on January 29. The first meeting in February will be on historical homes in Oakville. See our website for a full list of meetings.
Rod: To friends and Rotarians around the world!
Meeting adjourned at 8:20 PM.
Errors and additions not caught in previous Bulletin:
1) Speaker Series tickets can be ordered online from our website. Unlike prior years, we will not be using Eventbrite as we have signed up with Bambora for processing of online payments. Bambora will charge much less than Eventbrite for transactions.
2) Amin Kawr won the semiannual 50/50 jackpot draw of $148.50. He has kindly donated his winnings to PolioPlus. He, not Manny Pereira, also won the 50/50 draw and he will also be eligible for the next semiannual jackpot drawn next July.
