“You can’t always make the assumption that what’s obvious to you is obvious to everybody else!”

In a recent edition of the Rotarian magazine, an article with this title caught my attention.  Aside from the implications this has to social media posts we see daily, I started thinking about how I’ve come to realize what may be obvious to our club’s leadership isn’t always as obvious to our members. As I recall, since joining Niles Rotary in 2012, each of our club presidents has worked to convey to our members how our club maintains fiscal viability and stewardship of the money YOU donate.  Where does the club “make money” to allow us to meet our obligations to Rotary International, Washington Hospital (when we meet), as well as our local and international service projects?   We have our meeting fees, when we actually attend meetings at Washington West.  We also have a variety of recognitions in addition to how each member chooses how they wish to financially celebrate their birthday, wedding or rotary anniversary. How about the Happy Cup? When we were able to have it, what was done with 50% of the black ball marble proceeds? (the lucky person who draws the black marble gets to keep the other 50%).  What is the impact of each member’s choice as to where they wish their donation to be directed?  I don’t want to assume that everyone knows – therefore, I want to touch on these items in this and future articles as well as share my vision for the balance of my year as President of Niles Rotary.

Recall that in Past President Bruce’s year, he took time to prepare a PowerPoint that showed club dues and where that money is directed.  Each member’s yearly dues during his year were $160.00. Of that, $88.15 went to Rotary International and $56.00 to our Rotary District 5170.  This left $15.85 per member for Niles Rotary. It is obvious that $15.85 per member is not sufficient to operate our club and do the phenomenal work we do to make Niles Rotary Bloom!  Also, these dues do not include our meeting fee of which approximately 3/4th of the $20 collected goes to pay for the food and use of our meeting room at Washington West (when we meet); nor do they include the required purchase (or sale) of an elimination raffle ticket or participation fees for Niles Rotary events throughout the year.  I can’t fail to mention your donations to the Rotary Foundation via Every Rotarian Every Year (some of which our club makes on your behalf) nor contributions you make via a double sustainer for instance.

I am also reminded of how Past President Bruce wanted to have a social gathering for the second part of his Club Assembly to gain your input on dues and any other issue our members would like to discuss. I pledged to follow up with such a meeting, yet COVID-19 continues to rule the day in keeping us apart.   Finding new ways to conduct our Rotary business is a challenge we are all embracing.  With this in mind, I’d like to share my thoughts on meeting fees and fundraising.

When we started zooming, Past President Bruce desired to make the $20 meeting fee optional as he and your board recognized that COVID was impacting each member differently.  I carried on the optional nature of paying this fee for the first quarter of my year as your president.  For the second quarter, I have recommended that we suspend the option of paying a meeting fee altogether. Of course, should you desire to financially support our club over and above, there is always the Happy Cup!

With regard to fundraising, you have now heard that the Elimination Raffle will celebrate its 25th year in grand style in the spring of 2022.  So…. what do we do in the Spring of 2021?  All Niles Rotarians share a passion for education and assisting our youth and teachers.  I proposed a Welcome Teacher Day event that would supply the necessary educational tools and supplies to assure success this school year.  Yet once again, COVID has kept us from doing this as planned.  Therefore, the Elimination Raffle committee has met and continues to meet to discuss how we can conduct a spring fundraiser to provide much needed supplies to our students and teachers.  More on that in the months to come, yet I can assure you it will be a fun and entertaining event.

In this article I wanted to convey how our club leadership values each member and deeply cares for the club finances you charge us to oversee.  With the above, I hope I provided information to validate how your club leadership works to make sure club finances are fair to all concerned and how our actions are meant to continue to Make US Bloom!

President Dirk

 

Rotary Relevancy

Is our club maintaining relevance?  How are we doing in our efforts to engage our millennials and the diversity in our community?  I can tell you from my 37 years in the floral industry, I’ve worked hard to change the way Fremont Flowers has traditionally done business to be more inline with a diverse clientele.  In the old days, we ran ads in the newspaper and had BIG listings in the phone book. It doesn’t work that way anymore.  With any organization looking to grow, one better become savvy with Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Whatsapp, Facebook or a few other social media or communication apps.  Personally, I struggle to keep up!  I am encouraged and excited that a few of our newer Niles Rotary members bring this tech expertise to our club.  That’s not to overlook our more seasoned members who are the backbone of Niles Rotary.  Every member plays a very important part in the fabric of Niles Rotary.  But in this Pinion, I want to focus on technology and relevancy to the future Niles Rotary member!

“Younger people” (those younger than myself!) work differently.  They grew up with technologies that I struggle to understand. The idea of a lunch meeting may be foreign to them!  That said…how can we bring our meeting to them?  We have seen the emergence of eClubs to Rotary.  Niles Rotary has always been a traditional club….with weekly lunch meetings following the same format year after year. Personally, I love our weekly lunch meetings and know the value to the fabric of our Niles Rotary family in those face-to-face interactions.   Yet…under the leadership of past president Bruce, we saw how we dramatically changed the way we conduct club business under COVID-19 shelter in place mandates. As we move towards a post COVID time, one of our biggest challenges is to maintain a balance between traditional club meetings and a vision that provides our members with greater flexibility in the way each can attend a meeting.  With the help of Niles Rotarians Deepak Jain, Angus Cochran, and Paul Phipps along with Srikar Boddu from Washington West, we are working on an initiative to allow our club to continue offering members a live broadcast option of our weekly meetings.   We all need to ponder the implications of possibly allowing participation in a livestream meeting as a substitute for physical attendance.  Yet, ever so present in my mind are the words of Past President Chuck when he talks of a live Niles Rotary event.  He accurately states  ”you can feel the energy in the room.”  And, as Past President Rose made so clear in her year…..we Niles Rotarians are “Family By Choice” and we want to stay that way!   So I ask….how can we maintain our sense of fellowship and family while embracing this livestream technology?    A recent article in The Rotarian magazine points out…..”when we see something that may serve an existing bias, we tend to respond to it without thinking it through.”  To this end,  I ask you to be open minded and think through how we might weave such a proposal into our Niles Rotary fabric while maintaining that which we value so much as Niles Rotarians.

Keep on Blooming!

President Dirk

 

 

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Rotary Makes US Bloom         

 Hello fellow Rotarians!  Thank you for allowing me to be your President in what is bound to be the most unprecedented start of any Rotary year ever.  I know I express our entire club’s gratitude when I give a huge shout out to now Past President Bruce.  His steady leadership, guidance and humor through what has turned out to be the most unprecedented END to any Rotary year ever can not be understated.  Thank you PP Bruce….we all look forward to your demotion…whatever form that may eventually take!

 Today, as I flip through The Rotarian magazine, I see article after article that reminds me why I was inspired to make “Rotary makes US Bloom” my tag line for my year as Niles Rotary President.  Basically, being a Rotarian brings out what is naturally within each of us. It provides an avenue to channel that which is good within every member of this club and Rotary International. Yet…attending a meeting of Niles Rotarians is the very best way to see how each of us “bloom” in Rotary.  At the time I am writing this article, we are all still “zooming” our meetings.  I can’t tell you how anxious I am to be able to once again look around the tables in the room at Washington West and celebrate in person how each of YOU adds to what I’d consider to be the most beautiful “bouquet” I’ve ever seen.  Each member contributes in their own way….yet no one member is more “beautiful” to the overall “bouquet” than any other. The fertile soils of Rotary’s motto “service above self” certainly allow Niles Rotarians to Bloom!

 As stated earlier, it’s an unprecedented start to my year as president.  At the beginning of March, I had a different set of goals and objectives than I now have.  By the  end of March I started thinking about a total “reboot” of my year.  My thoughts of membership growth became some sleepless nights of contemplating membership retention.  Knowing how the pandemic affected my business, I worried about others in the club whose businesses were dramatically altered. I contemplated our club’s tradition of generosity….yet how we could best serve members who may need financial help maintaining their membership.  As the next few months unfold, we will be contemplating what needs to be done to address these and other issues in our efforts to maintain the vitality and financial footing of our 82 year old club. Yet…of great importance is that we continue to ENJOY Rotary.  I will elaborate on what I mean by this in the coming weeks. It will help us investigate new opportunities to keep Niles Rotary fun and relevant.

 As Rotary International President Holger Knaack’s theme for the year states: Rotary Opens Opportunities….among those include the ability to allow each of us to bloom as a Niles Rotarian. 

 Now let’s all hope we can soon “open” the doors of Washington West and be together again.  Once we do, I’ve proposed a Niles Rotary Family Reunion theme for that day.  In the words of past president Brian Hughes….When we all can meet and come together, “let the good times roll!” Thank you for your Rotary heart and your membership in Niles Rotary!

Keep on Blooming!,

President Dirk.

 

 

Holy Cow! Can it be? Yes, it can…this is MY LAST PINION PIECE!! Pretty amazing… I feel like I just wrote the first one yesterday.

So what do I say? (What can I say?) It’s easy – two simple words: Thank You. During my final meeting (only 23 days, 3 hours, 56 minutes, and 16 seconds away as I write this — but who’s counting?), I will have an opportunity to thank individually each of the board members, committee chairs, officers, and others who have contributed to another successful Niles Rotary year. But here, I want to express my thanks to all of you — to the members. To all of the wonderful, talented, interesting, loyal, fun-loving, and semi-crazy folks who make Niles Rotary what it is.

Thank you for your patience while I tried to figure out what the heck I wanted to be as your President. Thank you for your unwavering support while I tried to make the year what I hoped it could be. Thank you for your diversity – of ethnicity and culture, background, profession, interests, political persuasion, and opinion – which adds such a richness to us as a club. Thank you for your laughter when I tried to entertain you. Thank you for calling me “President Bruce”. Thank you for your service, to the club and to our community. Thank you for adhering to the Four-Way Test. Thank you for the energy and joy you bring to our meetings. Thank you for your continued participation in our meetings when something called the coronavirus (which sounds like a euphemism for a nasty hangover from drinking too much Mexican beer) took away our usual mode of fellowship and relegated us to cell phones, tablets, laptops, and pc’s to carry on our meetings. Thank you for your generosity – of time, money, and spirit.

There are a thousand things I could thank you for. But mostly, thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve as your President. It has been an honor. Thank you for being you. And, in the words of Sly Stone, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).

Thank you for always remaining NILES STRONG!

Bruce

For the last seven weeks, I’ve felt like a dog – I roam the house all day looking for food, every time I get close to someone I’m told to stay away, and I get really excited about car rides. It’s also been a lot like being sixteen again – gas is cheap and I’m grounded.

And so it goes…trying to find some bit of humor during a global pandemic. Because I’ve found laughter helps. And so does spending time outdoors, enjoying this beautiful weather we’ve been having.  And watching my geraniums blossom and my grapevines break bud and spurt to life. Spending two hours on Zoom on a Saturday evening with friends. Cooking. Reading. Hanging by the pool. Playing fetch with Jake. Listening to music. Thursday Rotary meetings.

Yeah…shelter in place is awful, but life isn’t.

Hang in there everyone. We’re getting through this…together.

Stay strong. . .NILES STRONG!

Bruce