Rotary File for June 7, 2016

 

Sarah Baxter-- Guest of Roger Christian

Janet Coester-- Guest of Deb Galbraith

 

 

June is Rotary Fellowship Month.  Myrene Hoover left lists of the RI Fellowship areas on the tables. 

 

The Duty Roster on the website includes the names of people who have signed up for Meals on Wheels through the rest of the calendar year.  Pat Schnack will update the list at the end of the calendar year for the next calendar year.  Contact Pat if you'd like to fill in in the meantime.

 

Janet Coester announced this year's Peace March for Global Disarmament to be held at Scattergood on Friday, July 1.  There will be a walk from Scattergood to Iowa City and then at 4:45 that afternoon a peace vigil at the corner of Clinton St. and Washington St. in Iowa City.

 

Chris Knapp and Amy Nicholson both talked about some of the highlights of the Seoul conference.  There were almost a record number of attendees at around 47,000. There were an impressive array of prestigious speakers.  The registration for the Atlanta Conference which starts June 10, 2017, is online now.  It currently costs $340 and the price will be going up another $75 every 4 months.

 

There were many Happy Bucks, including happiness from travelers to Seoul, New York City, Canada and elsewhere. 

 

Casey Cook announced that we have reached the $50,000 goal for the Community Foundation AM Rotary Endowment Fund.  Please continue to contribute.

 

 

Deb Dunkhase gave an update on "Next Year" during her year as president of the club starting July 1.  She mentioned that she had been a member of the IC Noon Rotary for many years but was not very active.  Herb Wilson suggested that she transfer to the AM Club about six years ago and that is when she really became a Rotarian.

 

The RI theme next year is Rotary Serving Humanity.  We will try to emulate that theme throughout the year.  We will start by saying the 4-Way Test more frequently than we have done in the past.  It takes many hands to make a club a vibrant one, and we have many active members.  Deb started out by listing how club members have been involved and engaged this past year.  At least 58 members have been actively engaged and 12 have taken on leadership roles.  There were at least 15 members at district conference, and we know many more will do so this next year when the conference is back in Coralville during Chris Knapp's year as District Governor.

 

Deb listed the major committees and the people involved, as well as the club officers, directors and committee chairs.  One new role is Social Media Coordinator.  Amanda McFadden has volunteered to take on that role.  Our website will be improved as a communications tool. Dave Parsons will be handling public relations. Deb Ockenfels will continue as Foundation Chair. Deb Galbraith is continuing as Social Chair.

 

Deb went over next year's budget and compared it to this year's.  This year we allowed a deficit budget that will reach about -$15,000 by the end of June.  We could afford to do that because we have money in reserve that we could use to transition to a more supportable level of income and expense.  For this coming year Deb involved the past presidents, the board, committee chairs and others to advise on how to restructure the budget.  This job was done conservatively, using a 62 member figure to determine dues (we are currently at 68 members).  Using the conservative number we expect for FY17 a budget of $45,235 which includes $19,140 in dues income, $15,000 in meal income, $7725 from fundraisers, $2500 from Happy Bucks and a special funding effort of $1000 for Polio Plus.  Distributions should bring us to about a $1000 positive balance in the FY17 budget by the end of FY17. 

 

Once distributions of dues income is apportioned to D6000, club operations, and administrative expenses there is $6815 leftover to apply to youth and service activities.  This number added to the amount raised from fundraisers and other activities will give us $15,015 to spend on youth and service projects.  This is $19,859 less than we spent this year because we no longer can count on the Can Project and we have not signed on for any district grants this coming year.  We expect to fund 2 community grants for $2500 each.  We are budgeting for 4 RYLA students and 3 World Affairs recipients.  We have 3 Interact Scholarships to award this coming year.  We are also apportioning small amounts of funding for one grass roots grant, dictionaries, the books we donate on behalf of speakers, the D6000 Youth Fund, IA MOST and the Ponseti Project.  If we raise more funds we can look at additional projects, but for now, if new projects are proposed they may have to be delayed until funds have been raised.

 

Deb also announced that next year we will do a What Jazzes You Up the last Tuesday each month and will begin rotating through our whole membership when we complete it for new members.  There will also be brief monthly reports on what went down at each Board meeting.  All committees will have a chance to report quarterly as well.