- Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks and I'm honored
- to serve as your president this year. Please silence your electronic devices. On this day in history,
- March 24th, 1989, the Exxon tanker Valdez struck a reef and spilled approximately 11 million gallons
- of crude oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
- David Wright will deliver today's reflection. Well, it's May 10th, 1940, and a young couple are in their
- backyard in Antwerp, Belgium, bearing a small marionette in their backyard.
- His name is Isidor Osnowicz, and her name is Francis, and they have made a deal with each other that
- if the bombs start to drop, they are going to flee the country. You see, the Nazis have just invaded
- Belgium, and his grandmother has told him that he needs to bury that puppet
- because that is a puppet of Adolf Hitler. You see, he's been doing political satire about the Nazis
- and doing anti-fascist performance theater. And the Nazis take notes of these kinds of things before
- they invade. So they take their bikes and they flee the country. Problem is,
- They have to flee through France and the Nazis are invading France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands all
- on the same day. So now they have to flee France and they make their way through France over a few weeks
- and find themselves in Northern Morocco. If you've ever seen the movie Casablanca, that's about that
- evacuation route.
- And there, they end up in an internment camp because Vichy France, France has fallen and now the Nazis
- are present there too. With some help, they manage to escape and they make it to Lisbon, Portugal. Their
- hope is to come to America to escape
- the problems of Europe. But at that time, immigration is clamping down in the US. I know it's hard to
- believe in our modern times, but at that time, there was a movement called America First, and it was
- out for America itself, anti-immigration. And they were shutting down the avenues for the war refugees
- coming. So he gets in on a boat
- and goes to England if he agrees to fight for the allies, they'll let him and his family come. Eventually,
- the war is won and he tries again to come to the US. He goes to the immigration office every day for
- several weeks. He said his goal was to pester him until they finally agreed.
- He had to find a job, which he did. He found a job in Montana doing store design, storefront designs
- with his artistic abilities. And he brought his family over in 1950. He had to put them on a train because
- he only had enough money for his wife and his son. So he hitchhiked his way to it. And
- Basically, they were refugees looking for a place to escape the threats of Europe and the hardships
- there. And they found that home in America. His son would go on to grow up and become part of the Muppets,
- Frank Oz. So the next time you see the Muppets and see Miss Piggy,
- or you watch Star Wars and you see Yoda, know that that was Frank Oz, a son of a refugee from Europe
- that became an American and was able to become a fun little immigrant story for our nation. Thank you, David.
- Sam Udeck will introduce our guests today. Hey, we have a few guests in person today. We have Danya
- Jaburi, a guest of art, Shane Gibson, guest of Jim Bright, Nick Capus, a guest of David Meyer, and Anne
- Edmonds, a guest of Judy Schroeder. And do we have any guests online? We have Marianne Pelleck from
- 100 Women Who Care. Welcome, everybody.
- Then if you would like to learn more about Rotary, turn to the person next to you or across the table
- and ask away. A couple of birthdays to observe this week. On the 29th, Liz Irwin, and then on the 30th,
- Carol Ann Hussler. Two anniversaries to observe. On the 27th, Mr. Rotary Jim Bright, 19 years. And on
- the 28th, Future Club President Hank Walter, nine years in Rotary.
- Announcements. So we're doing something different this week. If people like it, we'll continue. But
- subsequent to last week's discussion. Anyway, the announcements were flashing across the screen for
- about 15 or 20 minutes before the meeting. But I'll go through them quickly. Rotary District Conference,
- May 8th and 9th, Golf House in Louisville. Lots of fun things to do Friday evening.
- And then on Saturday, lots of informative sessions. Chambers business after hours tomorrow, 530 to 730
- at One World Catering. See me if you'd like to learn more. Tree planting, April 18th, Lake Monroe, subject
- to the water being down. We'll have more details in the weeks ahead.
- On April 14th, which is a Tuesday. That's one of the days where we're kicked out of the union as per
- our agreement with the IMU And our gathering that day will be joining the heading home of South Central,
- Indiana at their regional housing summit We'll have more details soon But at this point just remember
- that unlike one of our regular meetings when you show up, this will be one of
- that will need to have a head count probably a week in advance so we can make sure that we have the
- right number of meals for all the Rotarians. Need a Zoom host and someone to deliver a reflection for
- next week? See me if you have an interest. The deadline for this year's district grant is on the 27th,
- so it's coming up. If you have any interest in applying for what hopefully will be a $6,000 grant,
- See Sarah Loughlin who's back at that table or Diana Hoffman over there can help you, but please get
- your application in. Next Rotary Book Club meeting on the 22nd of April, home of Judy Schroeder. The
- book is Audrey McCluskey's Girl Child. We heard from Audrey McCluskey a few weeks ago, did a really
- good job. So see Judy Schroeder or Sally Gaskell if you have questions. My Sister's Closet organizational
- member, they have an
- hosting an evening with Maya Angelou, a dinner theater April 10th and 11th. And they planned a really
- elegant event at the Bloomington Country Club. Proceeds will benefit the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra
- and the My Sister's Closet Relocation Fund. For more information, see club members Sandy Keller and
- Marcy Hibbard. They're both here today. Wave your hands, Sandy. And there they are, kind of in the tables
- in the back. Or you can go to My Sister's Closet website
- and find out more. Finally, we heard from organizational member Health Net a few weeks ago. And anyway,
- they're in the middle of an advocacy campaign. They'd like you to check it out. And if you have an interest,
- file something online to provide support. So you want to go to indyhealthnet.org, search for 340B advocacy.
- And Tyler, I think we're ready for the PowerPoint.
- So we did this particular membership quiz a couple of months ago, but we have so many Rotarians who
- exercise at the Southeast YMCA. Some of them probably think they're exercising anonymously, but unfortunately
- I've seen them. So five Rotarians and four of them exercise at the Bloomington Southeast YMCA. One of
- the individuals does not.
- And here are the five individuals. Upper left, we have John Diltz. Upper center, Jim Bright. Upper right,
- Lauren Snyder. Bottom left, Mark Peterson. Bottom right, Art Omick. So, when I ask the question, put
- up your hands online, put up your hands electronically.
- Put up your hand if you think that John Diltz is one of five in this list who does not exercise at the
- Bloomington Southeast YMCA. Uh-oh. We have quite a few, including John. How about past district governor,
- Club President, Mr. Rotary Jim Bright. Does he even have time to exercise at the Southeast YMCA? Put
- up your hand if you think Jim is the one. Oh, I see a couple of votes in the room. I can't tell what
- we have online. Third choice is Lauren Snyder, past Club President. Put up your hand if you think Lauren
- is the one. Oh, we have quite a few for Lauren as well.
- All right, our club secretary, Mark Peterson, who's sitting over there, put your hand up, Mark. Put
- up your hand if you think Mark is the one who does not exercise at the Southeast YMCA. Mark, you're
- not getting, oh, okay, Forrest kind of gave you a half-hearted vote. Yeah, it might've been a sympathy
- vote. And the last one, Art Omick, put up your hand if you think Art does not. Okay, Art, you're,
- Art, you're generating a few votes. Oh, and John Diltz voted the second time. Online.Lauren had the
- largest amount of votes. Okay. So Lauren, thank you, Leslie. Lauren's doing really well online. Okay.
- Well, if you voted for John Diltz, you would be incorrect because I've seen John participating in YMCA
- classes, sometimes in the same class with Rex Hillary. So,
- John, good dodge there. You confused others. They'll admire you, but they'll never trust you again.
- Jim Bright. Mr. Rotary, Jim walks. I've seen him riding the stationary bicycle. When he's feeling well,
- he is a regular at the YMCA. Mark Peterson. If you voted for Mark, which one of you did, you would be
- incorrect.
- Just recently had hip surgery, but he is a regular on the stationary bicycle, and I think he'll be back
- at it soon. Art Omek. Just a few people voted for Art. Art is a regular swimmer in the YMCA pool. And
- if you look at this picture, this is Art on a sailboat. If he ever falls off, those swimming will come
- in handy. And then finally, most of you voted for Lauren Snyder, and you are correct.
- because Lauren works both in Bloomington and the Franklin offices of Baird Wealth Management. He actually
- lives in Indianapolis, but he golfs. And if you've ever seen Lauren in person, no surprise, he is an
- avid runner. So Lauren's in good shape, doesn't exercise at the Y, but he does a lot. So anyway, you
- did really well. John, you probably had about 10 people. You swayed their votes. So anyway, good job.
- Show this slide all the time, Rotary seven areas of focus. And a reminder that March is water, sanitation,
- and hygiene month. We've seen a couple of videos so far this month on Rotary water projects around the
- world. And we have probably five minutes for happy dollars. Is anyone happy today?
- There's always a reason to be happy. I just got to see the Chicago Cubs play in Arizona. It was a little
- bit hot, but we survived and I didn't get a sunburn. Yay. I'm happy because my son and granddaughter
- visited me from Texas for the last week. We just had a great time.
- I'm happy because my daughter, who is pregnant, is expecting soon and three weeks earlier than I thought,
- but I'm 13 pieces into my 24-piece quilt, so I'm doing well. I'm happy because my daughter and I had
- a wonderful vacation to Marathon Florida recently
- She managed to get me everywhere I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there, so we didn't
- miss any flights. So if I could have just one more moment though, I'd appreciate if this $5 could be
- used to provide some remedial training to John Deltz with regard to the four-way test.
- as I was one of them who trusted to raise my hand. Thank you. I just recently learned that a second
- cousin is here as a head oboe teacher in the School of Music. And I haven't seen her father in probably 60 years.
- And I'm sure he will be delighted when I tell all of you that I was one of the babysitters that diapered
- him. And I have some happy dollars because we got to see Patrick's family over the weekend and we don't
- see them as much as we used to. So that was fun.
- Do we have any online? We do not. OK, I have some happy dollars for a couple of things. One. Oh. Tali,
- you got one. Oh, hello. Thank you. I am happy because I survived my first ever MRI this morning for
- my icky wrist, which is sprained. $5, $5 for happy dollars.
- Sorry, Mr. Talley. And then I have some happy dollars, a couple of reasons. One, my son-in-law,
- Justin Bailey, who lives in town, his book is on sale, and he's actually selling some. If you get a
- chance to go to Morgenstern's, look for a book by local author, Justin S. Bailey. And then my brother,
- who is a Vietnam veteran, he was managing partner of his law firm, retired, has become a very
- good photographer, and his exhibition
- Coming Home from Vietnam is starting in Maxwell Hall. The evening of Friday, April 3rd, there'll be
- a kickoff event. There's something else the following week. But anyway, if you get a chance, get to
- Maxwell Hall, and you can see photos and interviews of Vietnam veterans and specifically their experiences
- upon coming home after the war, how they retreated, what they ran into.
- Anyway, thank you for all the happy dollars and a good response. Dave Meyer will introduce our speakers
- today. And just so you know, the format today could be a little bit different. So just kind of go with
- the flow. I think it's going to be a really good presentation. Thank you, President Steve. I am delighted
- to be a little part of what is
- an opportunity to shine a little bit of light on two volunteer organizations here in the community that
- are engaged in very important private philanthropy. One is 100 Women That Care, and the other is 50
- Men That Care. So I have two people to introduce today. Kathy Romy is the two-time convener, which is
- the organizer, annual organizer of 100 Women.
- She's also now on the steering committee. She's a former Meals on Wheels director. She was also previously
- the general manager of Bloomington Pops Orchestra. She won an award in 2016, the Excel Woman Award from
- the Chamber of Commerce.
- is a DJ at WFHB Community Radio, hosting Golden Age Radio each week. And she enjoys music, performing
- music, reading and writing, and loves to root for the underdog. Ken Buzzard, who I work with closely
- on 50 Men because I'm on the steering committee this year,
- He is the convener that is the grand master organizer of 50 Men this year. He is a retired Navy engineer
- who most recently worked at Crane. He is the former president of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra
- and has been served as an adjunct professor of aviation management at Ivy Tech.
- So give it up for our two conveners or one former. So I'm microphone. I'm talking to see if we can hear.
- Cool. So hello, everyone. I'm Ken Buzzard. And before I start my presentation, our organizations are
- It's kind of similar functionally to how Rotary works for your meetings. You invite people like me to
- come up here and talk for, you give us 25, 30 minutes and that's cool. We meet quarterly and we invite
- guests to come up to talk to us, but we only give them seven minutes. Okay. And we have multiple present
- presenters and the presentations are competitive. So I'm going to explain how all that works. I'm going
- to limit myself to seven minutes.
- followed by three minutes of Q&A, then Cathy's gonna come up and do the same thing, seven minutes of
- presentation, three minutes of Q&A, and then I will join her at the end, whatever time we have remaining,
- if there's something I wanted to say that I ran out of time, I'm gonna throw it at you at the end, Cathy
- will do the same, if there's any follow-up questions at the end, we'll have time for that as well. Here
- in front, Emily is from the Community Foundation, and she is our timer. She holds up green, yellow,
- and red cards. Green means go, yellow means I have one minute left,
- And red means finish that sentence, Ken, say thank you, and ask for questions, okay? So, are you ready
- to start the clock? Off we go. Okay, I'm Ken Buzzard. I am the convener of 50 Men Who Care. Somewhere
- around here is a slide. I'm going to advance it for a second just to see if it works, and then I'm gonna
- go back. Okay, I'm the convener of 50 Men Who Care, together with 100 Women Who Care, our sister
- organization. We are a pair of philanthropic
- giving circles, which I'll explain how that works in a bit. We convene once a quarter to raise money
- for worthy nonprofits that serve the community in Monroe County. So I'm going to talk about first how
- it works before I talk about who we are and who we support. So the coolest thing about our meetings
- is that when our meetings begin, we have no idea who we're raising money for.
- We have a social hour for the men at 30 minutes because we're able to be twice as social in a shorter
- amount of time. The women have a full hour. Okay. And we also needed a brewery where the women meet
- at the country club. So it's a lot easier to be social. Okay. During the social hour, any gentleman
- there who wants to nominate a nonprofit to request that we consider supporting them with our financial
- support, we'll throw his name and the name of his nonprofit on a slip of paper into the hat.
- After the social hour is done and we begin the business meeting, we draw three names out. The first
- gentleman, and the women work the same way, so when I talk about gentlemen, if you're a lady,
- the same thing, the ladies do the same thing because we're actually patterned after them. The first
- gentleman will speak for seven minutes about his nonprofit. He'll tell us things about who they are,
- were they founded locally, are they a regional group, a national group that serves locally,
- They'll talk about the population that they serve, the individuals, the needs that they're addressing.
- They'll talk about their size. They'll talk about their financial health. They'll talk whatever information
- that the presenter wants to share with us to give us what we need to know, to know whether or not this
- is a group that we want to support financially. After his seven minutes, and he gets the red card, he'll
- shut up and he'll have three minutes to take questions from the crowd. Anything he may have forgotten to ask,
- the crowd will be certain to follow up. Then he sits his butt down, gentleman number two comes up, does
- the same thing. After 10 minutes, gentleman number three presents, and 30 minutes after we've begun,
- we're done. Now it's time for the group to decide who are we going to support tonight, okay? And it's
- done democratically. There's no campaigning, there's no deal making, there's no talking, there's no,
- it's not like it's silent or anything, but every gentleman gets a voting slip. His name is not on the slip,
- And on that slip, he writes a one, a two, or a three. I sound like Lawrence Welk. A one, a two,
- or a three, okay? And he'll put that in the hat. We will collect the votes and count them up. Whichever
- nonprofit received the most support from our members is our winner that evening, okay? And then at that
- point, every gentleman will pull out his checkbook. I'm dating myself. We don't actually use checkbooks
- anymore, but he'll pull out his checkbook and he'll write a check
- for that nonprofit. Now the ladies write checks for $100 and they have 100 members. So that's $10,000
- of support to a nonprofit. Their numbers, their membership numbers go up and down. Sometimes they have
- as many as 200, sometimes as few as 80. But typically 10 to $20,000 from the women's group. The men,
- we write checks for 125 because we have fewer numbers, fewer physical men in the room. So we have to
- dig a little bit deeper. And our donations are generally in the scale of 65 to 75 or up to $10,000.
- The ladies got started back in the fall of 2011. That was 15 years ago. And they have met every quarter
- for 15 years. The men started 26 months later in the spring of 2014. So they had a two-year head start
- on us. And they had twice as many people. And OK, is that? Am I doing OK?
- they persevered through the pandemic where the men did not. And then our founder passed away right after
- the pandemic and our group kind of went silent for a few years. But Dave and I and Nick and a few other
- members that were in the old steering committee got together last year and said, we need to bring this
- group back because we can't let the ladies have all the glory. Okay. So we had our kickoff meeting in
- January. So the ladies have been doing this for 15 years straight through and have twice our numbers.
- We've only met
- half as many times and have half the numbers. So they've generated four times as much money than we
- have, which makes all the sense. But between our two groups, we have been responsible for $1.2 million
- in support for groups in Monroe County. If it's a local group, they get all the money. If it's a regional
- or national group, I've got two minutes left.
- regional or national group, we stipulate that the support needs to stay in the county, and it does.
- Now the women, bless them, had been eligible for a corporate match that expired in December of last
- year from the Shultz Family Foundation. Shultz Family owns Best Buy. To be eligible for that grant,
- you have to meet quarterly, you have to be registered with the 100 Who Care Alliance, which both of
- our groups are. That's a national clearinghouse of about seven or 800 similar
- 100 blanks who care groups spread out nationally and internationally. You have to be a women's group,
- which disqualified us. We tried identifying as a women's group, but they saw through our charade. And
- you have to raise at least $5,000 at that meeting. If you do, they kick in $5,000. They did this for
- seven years. The women qualified for that support every single quarter for all seven years.
- raising an additional $140,000 for local nonprofits, bringing our total up to 1.23 million. But of that
- money, 101.09 million of that was all from local members in the form of checks for $100 or in our case,
- $125. In 15 years, that's roughly 10,000 individual tiny donations
- from folks in the community supporting the community, okay? Now right here, I'm talking to Rotary right
- now, but I'm not talking to Rotary because we're not here asking for Rotary support. I'm letting you
- guys know about these groups because I'm talking to the Rotarians right now. I'm talking to all the
- gentlemen in the room. We would love to have you consider joining us in the philanthropic endeavors
- that we're doing to join us in this participatory philanthropy.
- I swear to God I've been practicing those two words for the last week to not stumble across them, okay?
- And my time is up. So that sentence is the last sentence. Are there any questions for me before Kathy
- comes up? Three minutes. My question is how many nominations are there on Everett before you draw three?
- It varies. At our kickoff meeting in January, we had seven. We've had as many as Nick, 15-ish.
- in the hat at one time. And if a group is nominated and doesn't get pulled, they stay in the hat for
- the next cycle, unless that person who nominated them wants to pull them out and put somebody else in.
- You guys meet four times a year? We meet four times a year. Our next meeting is in, when is our next
- meeting? It's April 23rd over at Heartwork Brewing. And the ladies meet two weeks later at the country
- club. I'll let the guy with the microphone figure who's talking next.
- I love your timing system. Does it really work? Do you have dominators that don't? Yes. And in fact,
- when I speak, I'm actually, I take every one of the seven minutes they give me because I love public
- speaking. But the one thing about our group is that public speaking is a terrifying thing for almost
- everybody. Okay. And even if we've got, if somebody has a nonprofit that they want to nominate, that
- doesn't seem to be worthy of support.
- The fact that one person is standing in front of a bunch of strangers and asking them to give them their
- money endorses the group that they're presenting for. It doesn't matter what the group is, if you're
- standing in front of strangers asking for money, that says a lot about the individual or the group that
- you're supporting.
- I know how it works with 100 women who care. Does 150 men who care, do you have to be a member or can
- you nominate somebody else to do your presentation for you? And on a side note, you guys give $125 and
- we give $100. Does that mean you care a little bit more? Well, to the second question, it's not that
- we care more because we're guys, we're not touchy feely like the ladies are. It's that we understand
- from a math perspective,
- that we don't have your numbers. And for us to be able to have an impact and to be able to attract other
- members, we need to have an impact. Basically, I got dragged in because I was at the time on the board
- of the Bloomington Symphony. And the ladies group had given them a gift a while back to help our children's
- instrument recovery program. Our executive director, Donna Lafferty, said, hey, Ken, why don't you join
- 50 Minutes so you can get some of their money too?
- By having a $125 donation, it's basically to try to encourage more nonprofits to send their guys in
- to try to fight for the money. And as to the first question, I forget what it was. Oh, yeah. No, you
- have to be a member. For a kickoff meeting, we kind of wait. If you promise to join before the night
- is over, we'll let you speak. But you have to have skin in the game from our perspective.
- And I think we have a, I have, this is, this is the, I'm out of time. Save your question, save your
- question. I talk too much. Save your question for Kathy. I'm gonna hand it over. Kathy's got seven minutes.
- So that advances that. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for this opportunity to come and speak to you
- today. Ken did a wonderful job at telling you what we do
- and how we do it. But I wanna talk to you about the impact that this money has had on our community
- because it's amazing. So you can see, or you saw from Ken's slide that we raised $1.2 million for local
- nonprofits here in Monroe County between the two groups. 100 plus women alone
- raised $890,500 since 2011, and that's just individual members contributions, those $100 checks that
- we write. And then you add the Schulz grant on top of that, which was $140,000 over the last 11 or so
- years. And that brings us to
- a total of $1,022,000 that 100 plus women alone has raised since 2011. You know, there's an old saying,
- it says, if you want something done, ask a busy person. You know that saying? I will add to that, ask
- a busy woman, because it's really true. So I want to tell you some of the highlights, all right, of
- how these quarterly awards
- have changed people's lives and what they've done in the community. Back in 2023, Bloomington Meals
- on Wheels was a recipient of award from 100 plus women and they used their award to support six months
- of their operations of their brand new program, which is called the mobile pantry groceries to go. That
- money that they won
- They were able to serve 200 families during that six months and deliver over 1700 meals to those 200
- families. One of the recipients said he would have to take two buses each way to get to another pantry
- to get the food that he needed. He had emphysema. It made it extremely difficult for him to do so. Now
- the food is brought to him.
- he now has the energy to prepare his own meal. Another individual said he was so grateful that drivers
- bring the food right inside his door in his apartment complex because he has such a hard time breathing
- that it's hard for him to walk. So he always calls our office afterwards every single time and he thanks
- us, which is really lovely.
- In 2023, in addition, Ivy Tech Community College has a program called the Student Emergency Assistance
- Fund. Basically, it's set up for short-term crises for these students that are studying. Things come
- up, they can't make their rent, they get sick, whatever, and they want to be able to continue their
- schooling. We did award some money to them that quarter.
- And in particular, I was shared an impact about a young woman who was a student there. She had two children
- already. She was ready to give birth to the third. She was balancing work and kids and school, right?
- She finds out that her job does not offer paid leave. She wasn't eligible for short-term disability.
- So Ivy Tech came in with their short-term assistance fund
- and helped her, otherwise she would have had to go back to work three to five days after giving birth.
- Not a great thing. I would also like to point out that 92% of all Ivy Tech graduates stay right here
- in Indiana to live and to work. So that money, helping those individual students, it extends far beyond
- just that individual.
- And last but not least in 2022, Teacher's Warehouse was awarded money from 100 plus women. Three of
- your Rotarians came and made a presentation to 100 plus women, Peggy Frisbee, Nancy Richmond, and Sarah
- Laughlin. And they were awarded the money that quarter. $20,000 jump started their fundraising, which
- was fabulous because they got additional grants
- from the Community Foundation that year and also the Smithville Foundation. And that allowed them to
- purchase warehouse shelving and professional-grade dollies and display bins to get everything up and
- running. And now they have at least 1,200 shoppers a year, and I believe that's growing. And their endowment,
- because of that initial fundraising, has grown.
- And they're now confident that they can pay their rent every month and keep their shelves well-stocked
- while helping our educators here in Monroe County. So they do a great job. And we're told that that
- was a life-changing event for Teachers Warehouse. So in addition to those quarterly awards we make, we also
- have an endowment at the Community Foundation. So once a year, we all write another $100 check that
- goes into that endowment. And that endowment balance is now $457,000. And it is what they call
- an unrestricted endowment, so it can be used for anything. I just want to mention a couple things while
- I have time, that some of those unrestricted funds have
- done. So in addition to our quarterly awards we're also reaching out through the community foundation
- to help others. There was grant support for the community kitchen express rebuild project the one out
- in Crestmont. They did a rebuild much safer space more functional. Also we had nine months ago the community
- foundation awarded a hundred thousand dollar grant to support the new Beacon Center and my favorite
- was the one last year where there was something called the Strengthening Monroe County Non-Profit. You
- may have read about it. A matching initiative. Oh shoot, I had one more thing to say. Okay. Thank you.
- Questions? Yes. What was the last thing you were going to say? The last thing I was going to say was
- a quote from Margaret Mead.
- Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. That's true.
- I hadn't realized that an organization could receive the quarterly money more than once. Is there a
- period of time where they can be re-nominated? Yes. So I believe this is correct. You can be nominated
- three times.
- And you have to wait for two years in between those, three years in between that. We've changed that
- a couple of times. Three years in between that. Men are two, women are three. Yeah, yeah. Any questions
- online? Not yet. Run, Michael, run. I don't need a microphone, but since I got it here,
- Does the organization have to, can it be for animals? As long as you are a non-profit 501C3 here in
- Monroe County. Yes, we've had PALS has won an award. Monroe County Humane Association has received.
- Sure. Absolutely.
- Can you talk a little more about your nomination process, specifically having presenters come up? Oh,
- okay. So we're a little bit different than what the men do. We do ask people to put their nominations
- in a basket. We draw out three names of agencies to make their presentations. You do have to be a member
- to make a nomination.
- but you don't have to be a member to make the presentation. So in other words, I could ask the executive
- director of my agency that I want nominated to come and speak if they are chosen from the basket. We
- have a lot of people that are afraid to speak in public, and this helps open up more nominations and
- more nonprofits for consideration. Yes, I just wondered if you have contributed
- in the past in my sister's closet. Yes, we have. They've won two or we're saying three times, four times,
- four times. Thank you. I just want to confirm if as a speaker, if I get selected to be a presenter,
- do I have to? Well, not me, but does the presenter have to be a woman or
- No, absolutely. The presenter can be any gender, okay. Yeah. So we've got a couple of minutes left over
- and there are a couple of questions, but there's a couple of small things that I, because I
- was so rambunctious and didn't cover all the points. Both of our organizations are partnered with the
- Community Foundation. We both have endowments at the foundation. They support us. There's business cards
- on all of the tables with our contact information, our schedules and our dates.
- that they printed up for us. Both of our endowments collectively are over a half million dollars. The
- gentlemen also write tiny little $100 checks once a year, and we've only done it for seven years because
- half as much time. But at our last meeting in January, at a kickoff meeting, we actually said, hey,
- we only need three or four more of you guys to donate to get over the $100,000 point. And I think Jim
- might've been the one that pushed over the top.
- So we have a six-figure endowment. It is a small six-figure endowment, but that helps support the community
- foundation to support us and to support you and to support the community. Half of the stuff that, half
- of the endowment is reinvested in the endowment. The other half supports them and allows them to continue
- to do the work in the community with the rest of the endowment to support the community. So it's sort
- of like that snake that eats its own tail, but it's all money.
- So that's all cool. And if we have any time left over, I'm not gonna put Emily on this, but if we have
- any time left over at the very end, I'll be happy to let her speak more to that. But I know there was
- at least one question left over for me. Go for it, yeah. Yes, I was a member of 50 Men Who Care before
- the pandemic. Yes, sir. And one of the things that our organization started shortly before the pandemic
- was in an effort to get younger people involved
- we had a lower threshold. So people under the age of 40, I think it was, could do $75 per meeting. Is
- that still going on? Thank you. I completely spaced. I was going to mention that. We offer
- junior memberships. They get the same voting privileges, the same all that. It's roughly half. It's
- $75 per quarter and a $50 donation to the endowment as opposed to $100. So for the year, it's $375.
- the gentleman for the full year at $600? I think for the ladies it's... Yes, a hundred plus women does
- the same. If you're 40 or under, it's $50 for the annual contribution and $50 per quarter toward the
- agency. So a total of $250 for the year as opposed to $500. You get a half vote or a full vote? You
- get a full vote.
- Full privileges. We're just trying to encourage philanthropy at a younger age and try to help those
- that have shallower pockets to be able to play ball with us. Correct. That was actually my question.
- Yay. We have two questions online. Go ahead. Leslie, you can go first.
- Um, my question was similar and what, what do you do to actively recruit new members to both organizations?
- Well, Leslie, that's a great question. And that is something that, uh, one of the things we do are things
- like this. Um, then come and talk to you and tell us about, tell you about who we are and what we do.
- And I will say that the reason that I'm a member of a hundred plus women and the reason I joined specifically
- was because I
- like the fact that the money stays local. That's what I like about it. I'm going to give anyway. I'm
- going to give charitably anyway. And one of the things I like to do is keep that charity close to home
- and, and see my community flourish. So that was attractive to me. So that's one of the things we go
- out and we, we talk to groups like yourself. We encourage our members to bring friends.
- just like you do here at Rotary, bring a friend and attend and see what we're all about. I can't say
- that we've really done anything by mail or anything like that. If you have any ideas, Leslie, please
- let me know. Peggy, you had a question on one? Yep, Peggy. Yeah, if I'm permitted.
- question for Kathy to answer, but also a comment. I'm also pretty heavily involved with 100 plus women
- who care and have been actually since the beginning. And Kathy, following up on what you just said about
- what attracted you, one thing that I've really found so good from being involved is how much I learned
- about the different charities, even though we may
- read articles or news reports or be involved with a few. You saw the chart up there of all the charities
- that have been supported, which I'm not even sure that's everyone. But at any rate, even with seven
- minutes and three minutes of questions, we really, really learn about the needs of the community. And
- then my question, Kathy, for you is,
- Maybe you could talk a moment about sort of the unique structure and that we're not even incorporated
- or anything. Well, that's true. We are not a nonprofit ourselves. And we are, as Ken said, we're a giving
- circle or a group of women who are out there to help other nonprofits, but we are not a nonprofit ourselves.
- We don't have a board of directors, anything like that. We are
- truly just a circle of women who care. That's truly what we are. There's no president. Somebody gets
- to take over the kind of the organization for a year, and we pass that around. Yeah, I don't know. What
- else can I say? Well, I'll say two things. One is our donation checks go to the agencies, okay?
- They do not go through the community foundation is our backup supporter and sponsor. You could think
- of it as definitely the sponsor, but when we donate to the agencies, it goes directly to the agencies.
- We do have a bit of a restriction. That doesn't mean you get on a solicitation list. It goes straight
- there. The $100 a quarter goes straight to the
- agencies and so it's not an incorporated nonprofit. They don't write a check to 100 plus women. They
- write a check to the agency and the community foundation helps us funnel that money to the agency. It
- helps us do some of that bookkeeping. If I can piggyback on that, the men do it slightly differently,
- but for different reasons. When we reformed at the first of this year,
- there were some lessons learned from the past. One of the things with solicitation, when we were writing
- individual checks to a nonprofit, sometimes even though we asked them not to solicit, we would end up
- on their mailing list individually. And we kind of frowned upon that. There was a second really good
- reason why we changed. Oh yeah, collecting was a whole lot more difficult, particularly as we went into
- the pandemic. Nick was our convener at that time. And when you join the group, you're committing to support
- our mission for the year. Whether you come to the meetings, we hope you come to all the meetings, but
- if you don't come to the meeting, that's okay, we'll tell you, oh, this quarter, we're supporting Ken
- Buzzard's European Travel Fund, okay? And so everybody has to write me a check for 125 dollars. Well,
- some people wouldn't do that, or some people, we couldn't get ahold of all that. So this year, how we're
- doing it differently is we're all writing checks for the full year upfront to the Community Foundation,
- and they're shepherding our money for us, and they write a single check
- because the burden, if we are sending 100 checks to a tiny little nonprofit that then have to turn around
- and acknowledge 100 tax deductible receipts with 100 letters, 100 stamped envelopes, then the time and
- labor and all that, plus the risk of those individuals ending up on their solicitation list, we thought,
- let's try it differently. Let's just try a different way of doing this. So we send the money to the
- community foundation. The gentlemen who write that check immediately get a tax receipt for the entire
- year on the spot.
- And then they join us each quarter to tell us how to take that money and send it back out into the community.
- Unity Foundation sends one check, one great big check to the nonprofit. And if they end up on their
- solicitation list, God bless them. That's okay. We do it differently for different reasons. There's
- no right way to do it. Ask us in a couple of years, one of us will say, oh, we really should have done
- it the way the other group did. And then we'll revisit it and change it. But that's one of the cool
- things about
- We don't have a board of directors. We're just a club. In our case, we're just a bunch of guys who are
- getting together once a quarter at a brewery to write a check. We're not there to drink the beer. Yeah,
- yeah, yeah. We used to meet at the country club like the ladies did. We couldn't afford it.
- Because again, because we don't have a bank account, we don't have resources. This is all based on individual
- donations.
- and the country club changed. I mean, no criticism of the country club, but the target audience that
- they're aiming for is different than what we are. Okay, they've evolved, they've reinvested, they need
- to recover that, and that's perfectly fine. We went to a brewery because they're like, we'd love to
- have all these civic leaders come in and see our facility. They invested in us. They gave us their meeting
- space for free first quarter. And they're giving, even though we're not registered, they're giving us
- the nonprofit rate
- for the rest of the year, for the rest of our life, for the rest of our relationship with them. So I'm
- not going to pimp for hard work brewing, but if you want to go grab a Brewski. Actually, we have a couple
- more. Actually, we're until 57. So we got four more minutes. So don't ask me any questions, because
- I'll use them all up answering. So hang on a second, Dave. Just one quick question.
- Well, too, actually, what's the meeting like? Do you just walk in and you start talking or is there
- some kind of connectivity, networking? And then the second thing, what do you do between meetings? Our
- meeting begins with social hour. We open the doors at five. You can come in and meet other people and
- talk, get a glass of wine or whatever and do some networking. And then our meeting starts at six.
- and we do the basket draw and we're out of there at seven o'clock. Yeah, pretty quick. For the men,
- we meet at six at 5.30. We have a 30 minute, cause it's the bars right there. They have pizzas and all
- that. And we network as well. Our meeting starts at six. We go until seven. For our next meeting, the
- group that we supported last quarter will be coming in to get the picture taken with the big check and
- to let us know how they are. Thank you. They'll let us know how they are using
- the money that we gave them. We need more men because when we started up and trying to get the word
- out about other meetings, we're using social media, we're using word of mouth, we don't have an ad campaign.
- So we were hoping to get half of 50 for our first meeting and we missed that by a couple of gentlemen.
- Our personal goal is to hit 50 by the end of the year. I'm hoping we have 40 at our next meeting. The
- viability of the group depends on the participation of the individuals in the community.
- Okay. Um, that that's, it's all about us. So please consider becoming one of us, one of us, one of them.
- Yeah. So he already answered one question. Um, what about, so you both look, you both stay in Monroe
- County, right? Yes. Right. Okay. Okay. And, and you haven't had more than 50 men. We've had as many
- as 84, I believe is when we were at our peak pre pandemic.
- We're at 23 right now. But we've only had one meeting. Dave. This is really just not a question, but
- it is a question that I got from somebody else about 50 men and that was, why participate in this kind
- of giving circle? I give money to whatever organization I want to. I think I'd like to answer that question
- that was asked me for the group, which is, well, it's impact.
- It's the fact that your check that you give is multiplied by all the other people that are in the room
- and part of that giving circle. And so if it's really a good cause that you're giving to, then come
- to a meeting, participate, and make the case for why everybody should support that group that quarter.
- And next quarter, try again if it didn't work the last time. Well, you're right about that. It is about
- impact. And it is about, as I said before, keeping your community thriving.
- you are directly affecting your neighbors and all the people that live here in Monroe County in Bloomington
- with you. And that to me is everything as opposed to writing a check to a large organization that may
- do good work, but doesn't always have the impact. At 12 seconds, Nick. Can you quickly explain the lessons
- learned on how to divvy up to quarters for the men? Right.
- I can't quickly do that. So I'll explain how we do it. How we do it is we observed that when we have
- competitive presentations that groups that are sponsoring children or dogs tended to win more often
- than not. Okay. If you had handicapped one-legged dog with an orphan child group, slammed up.
- Okay, so what we've decided to do is we're gonna, we're dividing, we're attempting to divide, and the
- women don't do this, this is just a guy thing. We're attempting to divide the donation space based on
- mission each quarter. We have a free for all fourth quarter. First quarter might be children,
- second quarter, dogs, third quarter, everybody that didn't get a quarter. We're still learning as we
- do this. In fact, because our numbers need to be up, we're not doing that this quarter.
- So we're going to delay implementing that until January of next year. But the goal is to give every
- group a fair shot in their own space without competing against one-legged orphan dogs. Okay. So thank
- you guys for your time to give us your time tonight. We got to get out of here. So thank you all. That
- then can great job.
- I understood the Lawrence Welk reference. I still write checks and I understood the Pimp reference.
- So I'm not sure what that says about me, but what a wonderful presentation. $1.2 million. That is so
- very impressive. And thank you both of you for what you do for Monroe County. In honor of your talk,
- a donation was made to this quarter to Amethyst House. I want to thank today's volunteers, Houshee Wang, Sam Udak,
- Dave Meyer, Leslie Katsenko, David Wright, Marilyn Wood, Michael Shermas, Elan Barker, our Zoom and
- audio producer Tyler. You were kind of dealing with a couple of gremlins today, so thank you. And Mandy,
- thank you as well. So our next regular meeting will be on March 31st upstairs in the stateroom. We've
- not been in the stateroom for a long time. It's a very small
- I'm not even for sure which door we'll use to enter, but hopefully we'll have that worked out by next
- week. So Robert Frew and Juan Carlos Arango will speak to us about growing new farmers in new lands.
- So please join us. So Tyler, if you'd put up the graphic for the four-way tests, and if you're able,
- please stand. Of the things we think, say, or do,
- First is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concerned? Third, will it build goodwill and better
- friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concerned? And fifth, is it fun?