December 17, 2025 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Our guest today was Reagan Southerland.
Phil won the 50/50.
Dan won the chance to draw in the card game but pulled the 9 of spades.
Tony presented his famous NH Trivia, Holiday Songs edition.
Upcoming activities: Today at 4 pm is the carol sing-along at the Pemi Youth Center. Denise passed a signup sheet for volunteers to de-decorate the common on January 3, 9 am.
Scholarship recipient Reagan Southerland
Sharon introduced Reagan Southerland, who is one of our scholarship recipients. She spoke about her freshman experience at Yale. She started with a backpacking trip for freshman orientation (hiking the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut) and since then has been going to school. She is taking a writing seminar, an intro to economics class, a course on Persian language, and a seminar on global health practice. Outside of class she has been involved in a couple of clubs, the partners in health and the Yale Democrats (she has lobbied for federal issues and next semester she will do local Connecticut policy).
Mike Carrier spoke to us about the Rotary Foundation. He showed a video on the Foundation to start. The foundation raised over $569 million this year. The mission of the foundation is to enable Rotarians to advance world understanding goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, the support of education, and the alleviation of poverty. It helps fund all of our humanitarian activities. This is the 17th year in a row that Rotary International has gotten the 4 star rating from Charity Navigator. All projects start at the local club level…each club may apply to the Rotary Foundation goes to help support the humanitarian need that concerns them most. For example, our Polio program started in the Philippines.
No dues support the foundation; it is entirely funded by donations. The foundation is guided by our 7 areas of focus: environment, peace, disease prevention, water and sanitation, maternal health, basic education and literacy, and community economic development.
We have district grants, global grants, and Polio Plus. Rotary sponsors vocational training teams, global scholarships, district scholarships, and Rotary peace fellowships. Every year our district has a teacher scholarship that pays up to $5000 for further training. Rotary International operates the Rotary Peace centers disaster response grants as well as programs of scale (huge, $2 million dollar range projects.)
The programs are funded by donations to one of three funds. PolioPlus has its own fund. The Annual Fund fuels current projects, and the Endowment fund (which is over $2 billion now) is for future projects. Only Rotary groups can apply for funding through our Foundation.
The annual fund supports local and international grants through the SHARE system. The way the annual contributions work is a bit complicated. Members in a district contribute money that goes into the annual fund. That money is split in two; half goes to the world fund, where the large projects are funded, while half goes back to our district as district-designated funds (DDF.) Then the DDF gets split into global grants and district grants. For example, the skate park and Livermore Falls were both paid by district grants, as well as our styrofoam project. For grants of over $1000, a club must provide matching funds. We collaborated with the Bristol club on the Mayhew solar project.
We just had a global grant approved for the Common Man for Ukraine for $162,000, which will pay for several months’ worth of our trauma camps. Other district projects include local meal packing, a children’s book in Vergennes, and many more. Our district typically gets annual fund donations of $120,000 per year, so by the time the money gets down to the DDF level there isn’t much left. The district Foundation Committee meets once a year in May and evaluates grant applications and decides how to allocate the money.
Grant qualification: Every year we need to send 1 member to one of the Grant Management Trainings, which are held on Zoom three times a year. We also have to have two documents: TRF Club memorandum of understanding (signed by our President and President-elect) as well as the District Addendum.
Gifts to the endowment are held in perpetuity. There can be named endowments (Peace Center for example) or general.
You can contribute to the funds through MyRotary, through the magazine, through Polio Plus, or the web site. Paul Harris fellows are people who have donated $1000 to the Foundation over time. The Paul Harris Society is for people give $1000 per year. We have about 50 Paul Harris Society members in our district, so these people account for almost half of the donations to our district.
Happy dollars were shared by Tony, Denise, Phil, Mike, Sharon. Dan, and Erica.
Erica announced that Honduras Hope just came out with a new newsletter. She also announced that there is a student at the high school who is looking for evening volunteer activities (see Erica if you know anything).
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary