President Dick Jay called the meeting to order promptly at 12:29, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.

 

 

Greeters: Steve Higginson and Jim Porter were our greeters today and Steve introduced the members who brought guests:

Song and Merriment: Gary Pehrson led us in singing “Cowboy Joe”

 

President Dick Jay related that Randy Hein lost his father over the weekend. Randy said that he passed Friday night and once he decided he was done he passed away quickly. Our condolences and thoughts and prayers are with the Hein family at this time.

Charlie Shopp announced that Jim Porter’s daughter Whitney played on the KWHS girls volleyball team that just took State, Jim added that Brett Johnson’s daughter was also on the winning team.

 

Peaches Lynch nominated Brad Cundy for supplying Francisco with a cell phone while he is here. She then also nominated the DeGrave family for agreeing to be his next host family.

Tim Monroe nominated Denise Prugh for buying the Halloween candy from those kids who wanted to sell it and she then boxed it up and sent it to our service members, he also said her costume was fabulous.

Richard Schwahn nominated everyone who donated and also purchased the auction items this past month for the fundraiser for Polio which raised $2075. The buyers were: Charlie Shopp, Anthony Martinez, Dusty Johnson, Bill Schilling, Connie Brezik, Doug McLaughlin, Denise Prugh, Tassma Powers, Dave Bishop, Michele Wistisen, Dean Cline, Carley Applegate, Jim Grenfeld, and Ronna Boril. The donations were from: Jim Beck and News 13, Dennis Lower, Mike Stepp, Cori Cosner-Burton and Mercer House, Andre Acosta, Mike Brown, Connie Brezik and Buckingham Strategic Wealth, Dick Stribling, Lori Klatt, Fred Devore, and Carley Applegate.

Bret Ladenburger was nominated for acquiring and serving refreshments for the Meals on Wheels donor appreciation dinner last week.

Tim Monroe nominated John Barasso for the election tomorrow.

Lisa Scroggins nominated Richard Schwahn for putting together the auction for Polio.

 

Jim Anderson told us that they had a safe International hunt last weekend, the group that shot the most birds was the group of Charlie Shopp and son, along with Larry King and Joe MacGuire and they won a dump truck to haul all of their birds. Joe Bennick and Ben Houser won the Ford F-150 for shooting the most birds individually. The rest of the shooters were Bill Mortimer, Lee Watt and his Grandson Gabe, Gene Theriault, and Jim Anderson, for a total of 12 hunters and 2 observers, Fransisco and a friend. They brought back 43 birds for the Paul Harris Dinner.

Darren Divine announced that Casper College will be having some events for Veteran’s Day celebrations. Tomorrow evening after the elections at 7:00 they will be showing the movie Taking Chance and Thursday night at 7:00 they will have Michael Strobl, the Marine Officer portrayed in the Movie speaking at Wheeler Hall about his time and service in escorting fallen Marines.

Kendra Ziler invited everyone to attend the Casper Events Center open house this Wednesday night from 4-7, they are showing off the new seats.

Anthony Martinez announced that they raised just over $14,000 from the golf tournament for Polio.

President Dick Jay announced that the club will be matching Paul Harris contributions from the members up to $500 so now is the time to make those contributions.

 

President Elect John Griffith introduced our speaker today, Jim Epstein, the District Coordinator for the Rotary Foundation. Jim was here to speak to us about the Rotary Foundation. In thinking about how Rotary can be effective in our communities he learned by coming to our Foundation dinner a few years ago that the best way is for all of the clubs in the community, including Rotaract, to work together and celebrate successes together as well as have the local foundation work with the international foundation. He found out that Casper is number one in doing all of this. He said that the Rotary Foundation is his Foundation of choice and he explained why that is. The Rotary Foundation is very highly rated, the Rotarians get involved in the projects, the Foundation works with great partners and The RF invests in the future. To look at the top foundations you should start by going to charitynavigator.com, which rates over 9,000 charities. TRF is a 4 star foundation, 4 star is very hard to come by. So you want to look at consistency like TRF has been a 4 star for over 10 years and there are only 11 foundations that can say that. Look for the highest score and one that is efficient in using the donations for what the program is for. The Rotary Foundation comes in number one once you look at all of these things from this analysis. As Rotarians we see the money come back to our clubs after three years in the form of District designated funds, (50%) and The World Fund (50%). The district designated funds is also divided up 50/50 into district grants and global grants. The World fund money is what is used to match our donations to the Global Grants. Any left-over goes to the peace centers or special projects. The District matches any Club funds for projects 2 to 1. In Casper we had two major projects, Rotary Park, which received $13,000 in District Grants. The other was the David Street Station clock which received $24,000 in District Grants and that was such a good project that his club is copying it in Loveland. TRF has the ability to work with other great partners such as The Gates Foundation, United Nations, The World Health Organization, Peace Corp, Habitat for Humanity, and many others. The reason we can do this is because we are not religious or political and we have a huge International reach along with experience working on big global issues like Polio eradication and World Peace. Also Rotarians are members of key organizations around the world. There are 28 Rotarians involved in the United Nations because Rotary was key in helping develop the United Nations. This aids us in finding out who we should partner with and where we should focus our efforts. TRF also invests in the future in several ways, one is through Global Grant Scholarships which is a graduate level $30,000 scholarship. Each club can nominate someone for this scholarship. We have selected one each year for the past three years, two of which are from UW. The candidates are chosen because they can help advance the Rotary Clubs six areas of focus, being Education, Water and sanitation, Child and Maternal Health, Literacy, Disease Prevention, Economic and Community Development, Peace and Conflict resolution. Another investment in the future is through Rotary Peace Fellows, there are Rotary Peace centers in six countries around the world and a Peace fellowship is valued at around $75,000 and is very competitive. Only 100 people are selected each year and this year we have a candidate from our district that was selected, Jordan Mathews, she will be studying at the peace center in Sweden. Her area of expertise is gender equality. She has been working in the Peace Corp with girls in the Dominican Republic. What it means to make TRF your foundation of choice is to donate to it annually, he put fact sheets and donation slips on the table so that you can pledge a donation. There are 3 levels, every Rotarian every year is any donation under $100 that you pledge to give every year, the next level is sustaining level which is $100 or more each year, and the third level is the PH Society which is $1,000 or more donation. He asked us to sign a pledge form before leaving today Lori Klatt and Lisa Scroggins were the first two to do so. Liz Becher then announced that PH Society donors will be entered into a drawing which will take place in April at the Foundation dinner. The prize will be a trip to Chicago to have a tour of the Rotary building and other great things. Jim then read off all of the donors from our club in all of the areas. We have a great club with a lot of members donating to this great foundation. Last year the District had a contest to see how many new PH Society members we could add, Liz set her goal at 50 new members and we were able to add 52. Kevin Murphy was then awarded his PH Society pin.

 

President Dick Jay concluded the meeting at 1:16 letting us know that next week we will be back at the Events Center. Our speaker will be Mark Northam, Director of the School of Energy Resources at UW.

 

“Be the Inspiration”