Bernardo Wolfson on The Rotary Foundation and $100 Donation “Every Rotarian, Every Year.”

We were pleased to have Bernardo Wolfson talk about how The Rotary Foundation works and how our Club has a goal of having every member contribute at least $100 every year to the Foundation. 

   There a few focused things that The Rotary Foundation does:

The Paul Harris Fellow designation is earned when the Club member donates a cumulative total of $1,000 to The Rotary Foundation. If you are a sustainer who gives every year $100 to the Foundation, you will earn the Paul Harris Fellow designation in 10 years.

While this may be just a thought of having given substantially to the Foundation, it has a major psychological meaning to the recipient. I know that it meant a great deal to me personally when I became a Paul Harris Fellow in 2018. Realize that with over one million members, if they all became Paul Harris Fellows, that would amount to the Foundation receiving over $1 billion to do good in the world.

Here are the Club members who became a Paul Harris Fellow for the first time, or moved up one level in the Paul Harris designation this past Rotary year. Note that a number of members reached the ‘+’ designation for each additional donation of $1,000:

Also, 60% of our members have become Paul Harris Fellows.

Giving to the Foundation is wonderful in itself enabling Rotarians to do so much good in the world. Currently, The Rotary Foundation is working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to eradicate Polio from the Earth which should meet the health requirement in the next few years.

Here are the six areas of focus in which The Rotary Foundation has made grants to help the world in positive ways:

Here’s how our Club’s $5,000 donation can be multiplied to execute an approved  $30,000 Global Grant project when every member contributes every year to the Rotary Foundation:

On a three-year cycle, with 100% participation of Rotarians, for every dollar donated to The Rotary Foundation $0.25 is granted back to our Club by way of District Grants. And District Grants support a number of local programs such as:

And just look at how much The Rotary Foundation has given back to the District and local clubs last year:

A number of members thanked Bernardo for giving such an insightful presentation about The Rotary Foundation.