District Charity Fund Annual Meeting

Good Day RD7910CF Board Members!

Here are some quick updates as we have transitioned out of the 2025 Rotary year into the 2026 Rotary year.

DG Johnny has scheduled our annual meeting for August 13th, 2025. It will be a Zoom meeting. It is not listed on the district calendar, but please add it to your calendar. Let's pick 7pm. I don't want to go past one hour, as it is summer and we'd all prefer to be out in the sun or surfing! Johnny is cracking the whip and has promised that we can have a real annual meeting on Martha's Vineyard in May of next year. So, please plan on that too!

Let's extend a sincere thanks to Barbara Acheampong and Elliott Rittenberg, who have completed their terms as RD7910CF board members. Thank you for your service!

Let's also thank Carol Courville for her service as our Treasurer. The story I heard is that she has stepped back as District Treasurer but will stay on as our Treasurer for the next year until she wraps up he business and family activities.  Thanks, Carol! Note, the slide shows her district status. But to us, she is the best! 

A sincere thanks to Joyce for her leadership this past year. Like a fine Kentucky Bourbon, it takes time to appreciate all of Joyce's skills and drive and passions!

Let's welcome Penny Hammel and Jack Colomaria. Penny is our DGE for 2026-2027 and Jack is our DGN for 2027-2028. Welcome folks! These two have the loudest shirts! I love it!

As I mentioned in the district leadership meeting last week. Our goal is to create tools and processes to help clubs recruit more dollars, to do more projects, and help more people. I do not have all the answers to locating and recruiting dollars. It is sometimes just hard work. But we can go for big donations or little donations. Sometimes you want to recruit the big donors. Sometimes, 100 small donations of $25 connect the community better than one $ 2,500 donation. We can give clubs the tools to get it done. And for the first time this year, we have had two clubs WITH 501C3s come to us to take donations that they could not have made without us!

Finally, we need to revise the bylaws slightly. In reality, they have NO operational details in the bylaws, and I would like two changes. 1) Add more at-large members so we can spread out and talk to clubs about recruiting donations. 2) I want to move the annual meeting out of the district conference. I don't think anyone wants to sit at this meeting. The last I did was at the Newton Marriot and while it was a quick meeting it really was more about operational aspects of the RD7910CF. The proof is that it got axed in Elliott's year and reduced to a short info session this year. It is better to have a 'LEARNING' session at the district conference and put an annual meeting online.

One last note, I will be setting up a Google Listserve for this board. You may receive an email to join. The broadcast email address is: rd7910cf@googlegroups.com  and the group website archive is at https://groups.google.com/g/rd7910cf

Helpful comments,  concerns, and stock tips, graciously accepted anytime. Cheers! Rich DeVito, Jr.