President’s Report - Year Ending 30 June, 2021
Firstly, I have been impressed with the willingness of our Club Members to adapt to change. We have had 100% of our Members adopt Zoom Meetings as an alternative to face-to-face. We all know it’s not ideal, but it has helped enormously to keep us all connected. Also, our membership has grown over the last 12 months – going against the trend of many other Clubs – and this is testament to the caliber of all of our Members. We have implemented Club Visioning and established a Satellite Club. Both of these are works in progress and will continue to enhance our Club and its contribution going forward. I intend to be particularly involved in furthering the Satellite Club into the future.
While our ability to fund raise and participate in projects was limited last year, we still managed to achieve some amazing results. The Golf Day and its contribution to Shine for Kids was outstanding. We also helped make a difference with contributions to the Rotary Foundation, Mornington Community Information Centre Crisis Fund, Carers Victoria, Interplast and several other great causes.
I thank all of the Board Members for their support over the past year.
In particular, I thank Immediate Past President Ross Schweitzer for his mentorship, especially with respect to his knowledge of all things Rotary and protocol. Also, Secretary Pauline McFarlane, who has done a spectacular job without as much support from as she should have had.
Treasurer Chris Angerer has also over delivered. He has embraced Xero (from a MYOB background) and has done an awesome job. President-elect Neil Heron has supported me in facilitating Club Visioning and the Satellite Club. These are two very important projects that we embarked upon last year and they are still works in progress. I will be working with Neil this year to further our progress in both of these areas.
The other directors:
Linda Morris – Community
Carolyn Such – Fundraising
Maurie Selth – International
Brynton Fennell – Vocational
Mike Weber – Youth
Have all been of enormous support and have delivered amazing results under very trying circumstances. I think Ray Manchester also deserves commendation for his ongoing work in auditing our Financial Statements. It is an onerous task and I appreciate his ability and the level of detail he undertakes in the process gives me great confidence in our reporting.
I also acknowledge the contribution of Jim Young as Bulletin Editor – we all know what an huge task this is and I especially appreciate all that he has done helping me out with this.
I don’t want to just thank the Board – the Club is the sum of the contributions of all its members.
There are many members who contribute year in year out in various areas of service/interest. I won’t mention all of them because that would mean actually listing every member of the Club.
I have decided instead to acknowledge one Rotarian of the Year for 2021.
Bernie Edwards – Bernie contributes so much of his time so consistently behind the scenes. An enormous amount of time and expertise is spent negotiating outcomes with the Council – a job that can be rather thankless. He helps and co-ordinates IT and also put together the fabulous presentation for our 50th Anniversary celebrations. Bernie also costs up projects and assesses viability. All of this goes on “behind the scenes”. Importantly, Bernie’s stewardship of the Community Trust Fund has been instrumental in bringing the fund’s balance to $268K as at 30 June 2021.
My outgoing message to our Members and everyone outside of Rotary is that if there is one thing I could change, it would be to have every person contribute to Community 2 hours per month – in whatever avenue of service or capacity that is means something to you. Covid has highlighted the importance of Community, Connection and the need for people to belong.
I wish Neil, his incoming Board and all Members of the Club a very successful 2022.
