The End of a Journey, by President Cindy Gillespie
On Thursday, June 19, 2025, Santa Rosa Sunrise hosted a very special speaker, Club President, Cindy Gillespie! Cindy recapped her eventful year as president, summarized our accomplishments, and thanked the membership and specific members for their contributions. As Cindy said, this meeting was the end of her presidential journey, a journey in which she experienced her own personal growth. Cindy noted that she has grown comfortable in the position, learned to ask for help from members, and even told some pretty good jokes! This year’s Rotary theme was “the Magic of Rotary,” and Cindy told us that this year has indeed been a magical year for her.
Going into this year Cindy’s action plan was to help Sunrise increase: our impact in the community; our reach by, for example, increasing the number of new members and visitors; our members’ engagement; and our adaptability. We exceeded many of the goals Cindy set for the club. For example, we beat our goal of having 75% or members participating in at least one project and knocked our goal of one service project per month “out of the park.” We increased our impact by adjusting our “giving” strategy to favor smaller, less well-funded charities (example: we now focus on F.I.S.H (an independent, all volunteer food pantry) instead of the better funded Food Bank). We also gave $51,000 to 22 different organizations! Cindy also called upon her many years in human resources, in which she specialized in helping employees enjoy their work, to help increase member engagement and fellowship. She wanted to have fun meetings, so she added lots of photos, member recognitions, and member communications at our meetings. Having a new venue at Chops helped as well, especially because we financially help Chops, an organization dedicated to youngsters, by having meetings there (special thanks to Peter Hoberg for his hard work getting us to Chops). We had an active club events and fellowships year, with a beer night, garden party, multiple dinners, the raffle dinner, and the successful SCARC meeting. Our speakers and weekly bulletin were great throughout the year.
We continued our active support of youth in the community. Our Interact Club at Elsie Allen logged 400 hours of community service! We gave out 7 scholarships for Elsie student, as well as 2 new scholarships for Roseland Prep students, plus the annual Deshields scholarship. We helped 2 kids go to RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards)! We also grew our membership with 2 very accomplished and service-oriented new members, Bonnie Landers and Richard Ziegler. We are also working on new strategies to help increase membership, including a new logo developed by Peter Hoberg and his niece, and upping our Facebook efforts. Our 2025 annual raffle netted $55,000, which will help us find and fund more organizations that address food insecurity.
One very nice surprise was the district awards we received for Club Service, Vocational Service, and even a Governor’s Special Recognition award. Cindy rounded out the meeting by thanking some of the key members who do so much for the club, including: Peter Hoberg (for just about everything, including meeting tech); Max Bridges (banners and meeting set-up every week); Stacy Drucker-Andress and Peter Treleaven (food and kitchen every week); Warren Smith (meeting and projects photos); Katharine Anderson (lining up “volunteers” for the weekly thoughts, greeters, and pledge leaders, etc.); and all of our greeters, thinkers, and pledgers.
Thank you, Cindy, for all of your hard work, dedication, and skill in helping Sunrise prosper and improve this year! You did a fantastic job! Next up, Lori Rodrigues!
