Midyear nerding:

As we approach December 31, the midway mark for the Rotary year, all of the District 7600 clubs will be visiting ‘My Rotary’ to check their progress towards achieving the goals they set for the Rotary  year  … Presidential Citation progress, membership, service projects, pubic image, and giving goals for The Rotary Foundation.  Club Foundation Chairs and Foundation Advocates should be actively engaged in helping their clubs assess progress towards the TRF goals.

After visiting seven clubs in the last couple of months, knowing quite a bit about my own club’s patterns, and surveying data for many of the 64 clubs in 7600, three things really, really stand out …

1. The majority of clubs in the district would see an enormous jump in their members’ engagement with TRF by promoting an EREY (Every Rotarian Every Year) campaign.  Whether large or small,  a donation by a previously non-donating member could not only raise the club’s giving pattern to help meet its TRF goals, but could also be the starting point of a personal engagement relationship between that donor and The Rotary Foundation. Could there be club incentives? Yes.  Could there be club competitions? Sure. Could clubs match a donor’s contribution with club recognition points?  Absolutely.
2. Two concrete steps to make donating to The Rotary Foundation easier would be to have each member register on rotary.org. Thereafter, that member/donor could donate directly to TRF online. No paperwork, no delay.  Further, the donor/member could set up a monthly automatic contribution to the TRF on Rotary Direct.  This is easy, easy to set up and super easy to cancel if circumstances change.
3. Which segues to the third point … don’t wait until June to make donations.  During June TRF is swamped, swamped with donations coming in. Sometimes the donations don’t get recognized in a timely manner and thus some clubs miss the cut to receive banner status. To the clubs who have their Treasurer collect donations through the year and then send a check in June, you are particularly vulnerable  to the timing snafu.  What is wrong with sending in donations periodically, monthly, quarterly, in April, in May?

Shout Outs:

To Randy Yocum (Newport News) and Joan Pollard (Petersburg), both fantastic club foundation chairs,  for the recent invitations to address their clubs about TRF.  Proud to be their Foundation program speaker.

To Randy Cash (South Hill), Cynthia Gregg and Cindy Pecht (Lawrenceville), Stan & Debbie Wall (Colonial Heights), and Jim Halasz (South Boston) for their warm welcomes to their clubs.

To all Foundation Advocates and Club Foundation Chairs … please join in the Foundation Conference Call on Thursday, December 3 at 4 pm.  Call in bridge 1-712-832-8300, Access Code 9942092.