Logo for: Rotary Old Saybrook

OS Rotary Meeting 05/06/20

Pledge/Prayer: Pres. Gary McCauley
4-Way Test: Pres. Gary McCauley

Happy Bucks: Happy bucks for the day, Bill having fun in Florida, successfully making it through another week, happy for National Teachers Day, National Nurses Week, the nice weekend, haircuts!, try to be hopeful

Presidents Update: Masks are being given out free of charge to Old Saybrook residents at the High School and Middle School. The head of the food bank will be attending our meeting next week. We are donating money to the food bank. After a brief delay, Pat Settembrino received approval from Lynda Hammond to gain a matching grant for PPE supplies to our first responders.

Fundraising Committee, John Aforismo
John and Gary watched a YouTube video that gave ideas of fundraising. Ideas included adding a Paypal button on our website which would allow people to easily donate to the club. Amazon Smiles, directs a portion of purchases to a charity of the buyer's automatically. Omaha Steaks has a fundraising program as well.

Community Restart, Pat Settembrino
The committee has been working on a project in which the club purchases 300, $25 gift cards from restaurants and gives them to social services to give to families in need. The idea is to help individuals who may have lost their job and the restaurants that have been suffering due to loss of business by the shutdown order. The names of the card recipients will be kept confidential. There was more discussion on whether it would be best to get supermarket vouchers instead or maybe both. Gary suggested we go to the businesses and ask for a discount so that more can be purchased with the $25 gift card. This project is on hold until our budget is finalized.

Gary met with Carl Fortuna and talked about the town's Community Long Term Recovery Committee. People are giving anonymously and Carl asked if the club can help by distributing funds through our Foundation which is tax exempt. There are about 20 people on the committee. It would work similarly to project H.E.A.T. in which money is donated to the foundation allowing the donor to get a tax deduction. The Foundation then distributes the funds to the appropriate individual. Gary will be our representative.

Scholarship Committee: Charlie Renshaw
There were 23 well deserving applicants to screen. There will be 16 students awarded so the task was difficult. Because of shortfalls in fundraising, a new budget will be done which may have an impact on what we can do. We may have to decrease the amount of the scholarships. Charlie's committee will have a final determination Tuesday.

Budget: Gary talked about the dues which is currently $154 per year. Part of that goes to Rotary Int, part goes to district and the rest goes to internal expenses. Our meal costs have increased and its causing a shortfall because we are not collecting enough money to cover the cost of the meals served. No one wants the club to cover the shortfall so either we increase the dues, increase the amount collected at the meetings, or find a less expensive venue. It was decided to keep dues the same and make meals pay-as-you-go. John G. suggested the Estuary who offers their facilty at a lower cost than we are currently paying.

Foundation: Charlie Norz
Charlie met with Treasurer Kathy Callinan Monday to determine our obligations for the rest of the year. That figure is about $33,000. $2,000 was moved from Community Outreach for school/education needs leaving about $4,715 in Outreach. That leaves about $24K to be paid with $8K account balance. This does not include the $7500 recently approved for the Community Restart project. Money will be transferred from the Foundation to cover our obligations. Next year there will be many unknowns, the market and our investments, performance of our fundraisers, etc. Marty said we should continue with our Wine Tasting having come off a successful event this year but we should re-think the golf tournament which has been in decline. This years golf tournament has been suspended. John Aforismo is heading a fundraising committee and new ideas for raising funds will emerge. There was some discussion of scholarship awards in past years which will continue. Charlie Renshaw said in light of the tight budget, it would make sense to reduce the scholarship obligation to $20,000. Joan and Gary suggested taking $4,000 out of Outreach to go toward the Restart project leaving $715 in that program. Joan will speak to Kathy Callinan to verify the Community Outreach budget balance.

md