Welcome to November, Rotary Foundation month.  All Rotarians should be proud of the good work that happens all over the world thanks to The Rotary Foundation.  Please take some time and go to Rotary.org and explore some of the projects supported by The Foundation.  Over 35 million has been invested in COVID related grants.  Just in the last year there were 490 District Grants with 33.6 million of Foundation dollars invested. 339 Disaster Response grants with 8.4 million of Foundation dollars invested and 1359 Global Grants with 95.6 million of Foundation dollars invested.

 

Every year we give to the Annual fund, it gets invested for three years and then every dollar is invested. Every dollar, Is either invested in Administration (5%) or grants (95%).  We have to start from zero each year.  Every year our district gets back 47.5% of the dollars raised here to be invested in District designated grants or projects.  This year we invested over $55,000.00 of Annual fund dollars in our District grants.  These are grants applied for as matching dollars to the clubs’ dollars invested in your local projects. 

 

My challenge to each of us in District 5970.  If we each gave $25.00 more to the Annual Fund this year we would have over $11,400.00 more dollars available for our District grants in four years.  Where else can you and your club invest and then choose how those funds are used and use them in your community.  To me, this is the power of Rotary and The Rotary Foundation.

 

If you have not been to the District 5970 website for a while there are pictures of projects around our district and videos of our last three global scholars.  I find these very inspiring.

 

If your club has not had a presentation on The Rotary Foundation, please contact me at john.wasta@gmail.com and one of the District Foundation Committee members will come and be a program for your club.