Steve Levitsky visited the Shrewsbury club on October 30, to talk about the Rotary Foundation. He pointed to the NIC View project--in which our club was involved with other Central Massachusetts clubs to provide monitoring of babies in the NICU at UMass Memorial. Parents from around the world are able to log on and view their children 24/7 while they are in Neonatal Intensive Care.For his part, Steve has a daughter who was in the NICU in Philadelphia. Her weight had dropped precipitously after birth and was placed in the unit. The on way that his family could check on her was to go to the hospital. The service to families in similar circumstances in our area, that clubs were able to provide through District Grants from the Foundation, is what the Rotary Foundation is all about.
Steve emphasized that the Foundation, begun 100 years ago this year with an initial donation of $26.50 exists to help clubs do good things. He noted a project that his club in Concord headed up that raised $61,00 for the transportation needs of an orphanage in Haiti as another example. He said that the Foundation takes the gifts of Rotarians, grows them and then turns them back to worthy projects of clubs around the world. Those donations from Rotarians have brown to over $3 billion over the past 100 years.
Last year District 7910 raised $205,00 in giving to the Annual Fund and $1.3 million was pledged in major gifts, most of those pledged from the wills of donors. This year's goal is to reach $2 million in major gifts. The highly rated Foundation spends 91% of its funds directly on projects.