Year in Review
You did such a great job last year that I decided to summarize the activities and say thanks to the many members that did so much!
What did you accomplish:
1. You completed a visioning process and a long range plan with 5 long term goals:
a. You agreed to sponsor a bike tour as second major fund raiser for the club and this will be held on Sept 21 thanks to the planning of Mike, Cherie and the rest of the committee.
b. You agreed to do quarterly clean up projects to expand on Lake Winona clean up and have held 2 so far. Thanks to Dave W, Lance and others
c. You agreed to increase club membership by a net increase of 4 members every year– we have had 10 new members join us and are at a net 4 with one more that was effective July 1, 2013. Special thanks to Diane A and her committee. Diane has done a great job with her recruitment team and has been recognized for this by being asked to be a presenter at 2 district conferences on membership recruiting. And retaining new members is also very important and thanks to Denny and the other mentors for their efforts in this area.
d. You agreed to increase your contributions to the Rotary Foundation – due to a time lag to get the final reports I don’t have the exact numbers but you are very close if not at 50% of members making a contribution, your dollar donations are significantly above our prior level, and you have 13-14 sustaining members vs. 6 in prior year. Great job to all of you in this area.
e. You agreed to increase awareness of Rotary in the community –the mindfulness piece of the 3 M’s. You have had more pictures in paper, replaced signs by the bike path bridge and Huff Street club signing, been in GV Days parade and many other items. Thanks to Terry K and others for this.
Other things you have done include:
2. The new members have selected Little Free Library as a new project for our club
3. You coordinated repacking over 100,000 meals for FMSC with the next packing day in October
4. You hosted an exchange student and will be hosting 2 next year – thanks to Eric and Teri S for being our exchange program volunteers. After hosting a student I now know how much effort goes into coordinating this project.
5. You increased the number of social events - we had a golf outing, we went to a WSU BB game, we had a 90th anniversary social, and we had a picnic on a rainy day. Thanks to Mike B and Cherie and others on the social CM
6. You continued to promote literacy with several ongoing projects - special thanks to Donna Helble for this.
7. You redid our bylaws and constitution – by far the most exciting thing accomplished this year. – thanks to Bob D, Bob W, JC and Mark P for stepping up to take on this project.
8. You hosted a successful Shadow Program - Thanks Donna and committee
9. You gave out dictionaries to all 3rd graders – thanks Rod Baker and Roger Metz
10. You donated $3,000 to various community and youth projects.
11. And all of this led to you earning the Presidential Citation, one of only 7 clubs out of 56 in our district to earn this award. You truly had a great and busy year!
And I know I take the risk of missing someone but I want to say thanks to various people in addition to the ones I have already mentioned.
1. JC – our numbers guy that spends more hours than anyone realizes taking care of our finances. Great job JC.
2. Cherie – great job as secretary, another job with countless unseen hours to keep our records up to date.
3. Autumn – our newsletter guru that keeps everyone informed on what is going on and also for coordinating some changes to our website.
4. Ron Dreas – who has been Sargeant at Arms for so many years that no one knows how long. Ron sets up and takes down for every meeting with very few absences.
5. Teri Sim and Kathy R –the program co-chairs for the year. Great job and it was a relief to have that piece of the meeting always go smoothly.
6. Pat and Nick – for leading the “Rotary Choir” every week.
7. Autumn, Terri S, Cherie, Julie, Kathy and the rest of the Rose sale committee for coordinating our major fundraiser of the year. That’s what let’s us do so many of our projects.
I know many other people have done things for our club and to all those I didn’t specifically name, I also want to say thank you. The many things accomplished by our club would not be possible without the support of all of you.
And a special thank to our one outgoing board member – Dave Wickstrom. Dave has been on the board for 4 years and has provided great insight and feedback for the board. I could always count on Dave to remind me about bringing treats for the board meetings, but more importantly Dave was always willing to provide input on the various items that would come to the board. Thank you Dave.
Again, a special thank you to everyone for making your Rotary club soon of the best!