.jpg) Carl Smith Tells the SIS Story .jpg) A Paul Harris Fellowship for Carl  Don Campbell, Early SIS Builder with Tim Heaton |
| Today I am going to talk to you about the origination of our Club’s Stay in School Program, where the Program is today, future plans for the program, and a surprise. In 1992 when I was a member of our club’s Board of Directors, I was attending a board meeting when Ed Duke, a fellow Board Member was telling us about transporting students to various companies so that they would get an opportunity of seeing possible careers. ED also got other members involved including, Tim Heaton, Lowell Frodsham and Bill Gillot with taking students skating and reading to students. Muriel Gillot arranged for our Rotary Anns to read to children at Valley View School. I was intrigued with all of this and slid a note to Ed saying what about providing a scholarship to one or more students. And Ed sent the note back saying, let’s talk after the meeting. Ed and I talked about this idea which got me thinking about how to do this and this was the germ of my idea of a Stay in School program with scholarships to selected students. I put together an ad hoc group of folks consisting of Ed Duke, Jake Longmore, club member and retired Public School Superintendent, the principal of Valley View Elementary school and Norma Piche, a friend and retired teacher. I produced an outline of a possible program, circulated it among this group for feedback, expecting them to kill the idea. Rather, they came back with positive suggestions, so I produced another draft, circulated it and got more positive feedback. I then produced draft 3 which my team liked. At that time, Rotary Canada was trying to develop a National Program known as “Canadian Rotary Clubs Stay in School. Curly Galbraith and Don Campbell were very involved in this initiative, so I provided each of them with my draft of a possible Stay in School Program for our club. They each made positive suggestions and encouraged me to keep going with this initiative. With what looked like a workable Stay in School Program, I made a presentation to the Board. I asked for $125,000, to cover 5 scholarships for 5 years to establish viability of the proposed program. Bob Junker, President at that time and the Directors liked the proposed program, however were not able to provide these funds. So I had what looked like a viable program with no funding. But I did not give up. I wanted to establish funding for the program separate from other club finances so I tried to get The Hon David Anderson, Minister of National Revenue to provide our club with a tax number separate from our Community Service Fund. I had the support of Senators Dan Hays and Joyce Fairbairn with this. However, I was turned down, as our proposed program did not fit within Government guidelines. We couldn’t freeze funds over a long enough period as we needed some funds each year to pay students some money for passing their grades. I have my submission and Governments decline documentation in my file dated in 1994. What do I do now? I spoke with The Calgary Rotary Clubs Foundation and established they were not in a position to handle accounting for my endeavour. I then went to the Executive Director of The Calgary Foundation and talked him into breaking some rules by paying out funds for students passing their grades each year from an endowment. |
We created a special agreement with Calgary Foundation which also included power for funds to be returned to our Community Service Fund if the program failed and we would need to unwind the program. Steve Allan was President in 1995 and signed this final agreement on behalf of our club. We continue to have an excellent relationship with The Calgary Foundation.
So now I had what looked like a workable program, a good arrangement to handle donations but no money to finance an ongoing program.
My next step was to go to a client/ friend from my banking days who had a connection who was quite interested in my proposed program. They added some changes including working closely with parents to ensure their support and that I stay with the program for 5 years. They agreed to put up $50.000 which I talked them up to $75,000, provided I could raise the remaining $50,000. I went back to the Board who authorized $50,000., spread over 3 years and this satisfied my $75,000 anonymous donor.
Now, I had a draft program, known to this day as Draft 4, funding, and a good arrangement for handling our funds.
My next step was to draw some folks around me to get the program operative. I got Bruce Fenwick, Hank Popoff and John Lindenbach involved and among us, we put together application and annual review forms which with refinements are still being used today. Besides remarks from applicants we require written input from school teachers, the Principal, the parents and an independent reference. We have never looked for superstars, but rather students from families with single moms, or those who are in lower economic levels of society living in East Calgary. We always look closely at the School Principals comments as to their opinion of the students being capable of moving through Junior and high School to Post-secondary.
We originally called our financial support as “scholarships”, however this name became confusing to high performing students, so we renamed our support as “awards”. We started at $5,000 for each award and have gradually increased amounts with inflation to present $9,000. We also pay for tutoring costs for those students needing help with their school courses.
We try and cover students first and part of second year tuition costs with our awards. Students need to secure summer employment or student loans or funds from parents to cover the rest of their tuition costs. While not printed in documentation, we also provide additional funding for students doing well and in real need of funding. We also like to pay for some of our student’s final year tuition costs. This has them leaving our program with good feelings.
We do not abandon our students if their personal funding runs out, but rather those of us handling post-secondary Students keep in touch following students’ school progress, providing guidance and references. This also provides us with the opportunity of ensuring they have sufficient funds to cover their education program
South Rotary club also have a “Stay in School Program”. Their program differs from our in that they pay total Post-secondary funding for their students rather than our program where we like to see our students with some skin in the game.
It did not take long to establish that we had a viable program that needed some long term funding. Around that time, Dennis O’Neill, a club member came to me and said, Carl, I am going to arrange a golf tournament to help fund your program. I think we raised around $25,000. From the first tournament. That tournament was the beginning of our Annual Golf Tournaments to raise funds for the program. Many members of our club have been and continue to be deeply involved with these important events. Rick Erven has done a great job handling the Golf Tournament in recent years and he has identified successors now that he is going on to be president
Peter McKeen and the Jack Carter group of companies have been strong financial supporters of our golf tournaments. When they were lead funder, we changed the name of the tournament to “The Jack Carter Rotary Stay in School Golf Tournament”. They invested more than $750,000 for donations to the program, for prizes, costs of dinners, cars on par3 holes etc. We really appreciate their support. These folks have gone on to other areas for their financial support and we continue to look for a replacement major sponsor.
You might ask why we need to raise continuing funds from golf tournaments when we have about $1.8 Million with the Calgary Foundation. The reason is simple, we have about $1 Million in future liability at any given time to fund for students in process and we want to have enough funding to grow the program in different ways and operate the program forever. Furthermore, Golf Tournaments help keep our profile in our community. Do you know that most of funds raised come from Non-Rotarians?
Our operating bank account is an extension of our Endowment Fund account at the Calgary Foundation. So, we are subject to audit by The Calgary Foundation and The Minister of National Revenue. A number of years ago, I established a process whereby we produce a spread sheet every 6 months recording every payout. This must balance with our Bank balance. This report is provided to our club Treasurer and Board members and provides a strong financial control.
Day to day banking is capably handled by our club Accountant, Tracy Nelson, who looks after payouts for student education costs from written instructions provided by those of us managing Post-secondary Students, from our funds at the Calgary Foundation.
Early on we identified the need of ensuring that each of our students have a computer. In the beginning, I scrambled to find used computers which I moved to my basement and with the help of a friend would tear them down, wipe off hard drives and arrange for them to get to our mentors for their students. Now we work with Computers for Schools, a Government sponsored organization which gets used computers from industry and government sources, refurbishes them and provide laptops to us fully re-conditioned for the cost of Microsoft licence at $20 each. Our part time Administrator, Greg Hove now handles this process.
In fact Greg is now handling more and more of our administrative function for both our Stay in School and the Tom Jackson Stay in School program, quite capably.
Each year, we produce a report known as “History of Student Population – Stay in School Program. This report includes data on the 61 students who have graduated from our program to date and about 100 students at various levels of their education programs together with those students still in Junior and High schools plus those students who have dropped out of the program for various reasons. Any student who has forfeited their awards can return to the program and we will honor their awards. Two students returned to our program this year. Our report for August 2017 indicated that a total of 18% of applicants did not earn their High School Diplomas and therefore forfeited their awards. Part of this drop-out rate was caused by taking on students a few years ago below our usual standards.
We have approximately 60 mentors for our High School students and do not ask them to be Social Workers. We are simply not equipped to handle students at the very bottom of the education program. Many of you or your wives act as mentors for which we are most appreciative. Our Chair, Sean Baylis is always looking for more mentors, so if you know of anyone who might be interested, just give Sean a call.
A few years ago, Hank Popoff and I established an arrangement with Fish Creek club whereby we fund 1 student each year with them providing a mentor who is part of our mentor family. The idea was to help a small club create a Stay in School program at another school. David Leslie is our contact with this club. With this experience, we could do something similar with another small club in the future.
When our students complete High School, they are transferred to our team handling post-secondary Students. This team consists of Cathy Freer-Leszlzynski, David Leslie and myself, soon to be Michelle DeCecco. Murray Young also helped us with PS students.
A few years ago, there was concern at the Board level as to the management of our SIS Program. Michelle DeCecco took on the responsibility of hiring a consultant and producing detailed manuals and processes for our program in Junior and High School. I also documented Procedures for handling Post-secondary students, including overall financial controls. We now have a solid base to manage this program for the years ahead. We have also established an Advisory Group consisting of those of us operating the program plus 2 former students, Quan Ly and Peter Harrison together with Club members Jim Jenkinson and Don Ross. Don is our leader.
Recently, Quan Ly a graduate of our SIS program approached me about setting up an Alumni of former graduates. I secured permission from a number of our graduates to provide Quan with their email addresses and we will ensure that future graduates are automatically invited to join. An Alumni group has great possibilities including possible future mentors.
Many of you will remember Marnie Hess a long time member of our club. She died last year and in her will left considerable funds, possibly $750,000 to our club’s Stay in School Program. We won’t know the amount until her estate is finalized. I have done some work with our Advisory Group and produced a Charter suggesting Marie’s funds be placed in a separate Managed account at Calgary Foundation, with the annual revenue, only, be split with The Tom Jackson Stay in School Program in relation to the number of students in each program. I suggested that our portion of the revenue would be used for new education programs. Any spending program would need the approval of our Board and Trustees handling Marie’s estate.
So our Stay in School Program is well established with strong leadership in place, and sound financial base equipped to take the program to new heights.
As I am 85 years young and having been with this program for 23 years, I have chosen to retire from this program at this time and have selected Michelle DeCecco to take on my responsibilities. Michelle has been a mentor, is good at producing financial forecasts and has a real passion for the program. She is a Board Member handling the Youth Portfolio and has agreed to take this on including taking over my 16 Post-secondary students who I have been managing.
I would like to leave with a challenge to my successors to raising our awards from $9,000 to $10,000 each and funding 100% of our students final years’ post-secondary tuition. I suggest we have the funds to do this and some financial engineering would, in my opinion, confirm our ability to do so without effecting the viability of our program.
Our club has recognized my Stay in School effort with a Paul Harris Award and a “Service Above Self Award”. I cherish these awards, however, my greatest award and the personal satisfaction has been working with students and seeing them succeed.
Now for the surprise. I would like to have Michelle and Sean join me at the podium. We are returning the $50,000 seed money given to me to start our Stay in School program in 1995, back to our club, so they can seed some other program. Thank you, club members, for all of your support over the years, and I trust you will continue supporting Michelle and Sean as they take the program into new vistas.
Carl Smith
August 14, 2018