President Paul's First Meeting!
President Paul’s first meeting as President was July 9, 2020, a Club Assembly. Paul gave us some brief personal historical comments, asked members of the Board of Directors to speak to us about their plans and goals, and then herded us into separate meeting spaces to address key questions of grave importance to the Club, such as how to deal with the weekly raffle! What a wild morning!
Paul joined the club four years ago and jumped into active participate immediately (sort of - he tagged along on with 2-time Rotarian of the Year Penny Millar for 10 years before he decided to make his membership formal)! Paul loved Rotary from the start despite the fact that he had to team up with Don Floriani picking speakers for an entire year! Paul says that he "joined for service but stayed for fellowship."
Rotary’s international banner this year is “Rotary Opens Opportunities.” Paul’s own presidential goals are flexibility, valuable service projects, irresistible and lively meetings, quality fellowship, finding income to give to our charitable causes, and increasing membership.
President-Elect and Service Chair, Jennifer, outlined her key goals this year as increasing our service projects and interacting more with our Elsie Allen Interact group. Marty’s goal as Membership Chair is to increase membership from our present 62 members to 70 members. Roy is in charge of fundraising, which is a tall order since we will probably not have any in-person fundraisers. Roy mentioned that new member Debra Robertson has major experience in fundraising, including chairing South Lake Tahoe’s golf tournament! Randy provided an update on the Foundation. Did you know that since its inception 34 years ago Sunrise has contributed $494,000 to the Rotary Foundation? Last year we contributed $68,000, which was 4x our goal! John Jones gave us fantastic news about Surgery Clinic in Sabalos, Nicaragua. The center should be up and running by the end of 2020! John, you are a miracle worker! Sunrisers, we are going to start saving lives in Nicaragua! John’s next project: bringing potable water to the area.
We met in cool Zoom groups to discuss three issues: (1) how do we improve the Zoom meeting experience; (2) what type of auction items should we try to get for online auctions; and (3) what to do with the raffle – leave it at $250 or bump it up? Paul and Board members will be providing us with a summary of the suggestions provided at the meeting in the near future.
Well done Paul and thank you for taking the job. We appreciate your hard work, dedication, leadership, and organizational skill. We know you are going to do a great job. Remember, one of your goals this year is “flexibility.” You are going to need it!
