Our Board meeting resulted in a lot of interesting discussion. Next week I will put those discussions into an edited version to share with everyone. There just was not enough time this week.

 

Some of the sections of this bulletin are repeats of articles that have appeared before. There are several members who have joined and may not have read some of this.

 

Technically you get credit for each hour that you take part in a volunteer or Rotary activity. If you take part in an activity that runs for a day, or over several hours, you need to mark that down as “Activity Name” – Hour 1, Hour 2, and so on. The ClubRunner system does not distinguish the hours so you need to do that yourself, unless it does not really matter to you. Remember that you do need to mark down your own activities, check the Download file on our website home page. Your best bet is to go for “auto-assign” because the system will put that makeup wherever it is needed.

 

We’ve mentioned before that for some it feels really strange or disconnected somehow not to be tied to a meeting schedule. It’s also different to do things you want to do on a schedule of your own. You may do three things in one week, and then not do anything for a month or more. You do not need to worry about that, it’s the way our club is. Keep marking in your makeups and while you are there, look at what others are doing to inspire you.

You can keep adding makeups until you get to May 28, 2018. Try not to bank meetings, just keep adding them to the next available date for you, even if it is in the future. Several months of meetings are now closed, but if you have applicable makeups you can add those to closed meetings still. We cannot get a report until the meeting is declared closed.

 

Some of you may have noticed that meetings you banked have now been assigned to a date. I tried to go through the list so that we could keep going adding makeups throughout the year, even into the future. I know that for previous Rotarians that seems strange, but then we are not a usual club, so we do our attendance credits in an unusual way.

We are asking you to reach out to advertisers. Our aim is to have enough advertisers to pay for the website hosting next July. There are documents in the Document Download section that explain how to go about it, and there is a view of the current advertisers and the number of clicks that they are getting.

PETS (President Elect Training Seminar)/DTA (District Training Assembly) – are you going? Our club pays a levy to cover the costs of PETS and DTA, so it is free for anyone who wants to attend. I will be attending PETS as District Interact Chair and PE, and Kathy Trim will also attend. How many of you will attend DTA on April 22 to find out more about Rotary?

 

Registration information can be found on the district website www.rotary7040.com .

Our club has achieved 4 out of 4 Rotary Citation categories.

In late December, Canadian members received information with a suggestion that we could make an effort to work together to make the Loblaw's Bread Rebate very helpful to our community. Remember that wherever we live, there are foodbanks. Something to keep in mind:

"According to the head of the Toronto Daily Bread food bank, a $25 gift card is worth only a small fraction of $25 cash, because they usually buy food at deeply discounted prices and can only use gift cards for a few items where they have to pay retail price.

And from the donor's point of view, donating the gift card to a food bank is not the same as donating $25 cash, because of the tax receipt for the latter.  It does not appear that the food banks are considering issuance of a tax receipt for a gift card.

So an alternate suggestion, for a husband and wife applying separately with separate email addresses to get 2 gift cards, is to take $50 out of your grocery budget, use the gift cards to fill the hole, donate $100 to the Kingston Food Bank or Loving Spoonful or Martha's Table, and get $50 back on income tax.  Of course, for anyone in a tax bracket less than 50%, the math is a little different."

Let’s participate on an individual basis.  Obtain the cards, spend the cards, and write a cheque to the combe y organization of your own choice.  It could any organization that helps those who need help with food security. 

Let's work together separately, and we can do a lot to help the community. Here is the link to go to, to obtain your cards https://www.loblawcard.ca/

Council on Resolutions - Results