2023-2024:  A Year in Review

With this being my last meeting as President, I want to extend my gratitude to you all for your camaraderie and support this past year. 

I anticipated that my year as Rotary Club President would feel like drinking from a fire hose for 12 straight months but I was pleasantly surprised that the water pressure never got quite that high  – and that is thanks to all of you.

I am continuously amazed at how many things run like clockwork.  We have great committees that are doing fantastic work awarding grants and scholarships and awards and scheduling programs and service projects.  Every single one of you deserves thanks with a special shout out to the year-round workhorse committees of SAS and Programs Committees.

I know that we all aspire to be the best club we can be and it was really heartening to have such strong engagement during our club visioning process.  Thank you to Garrett for his wonderful facilitations and to the board for their involvement throughout and approving our visioning process action plan.  This hasn’t gone away – We will be sharing more about the results and our action plan on July 16 so sit tight for that.

This is a club with a long history and legacy.  I’ve been in this club since 2011 and a lot has changed.

Sometimes I think we are hard on ourselves because some of us old timers think back to when we had 250+ members and were famously known as a check writing club.

I want to emphasize that, although we are smaller in size than we used to be, we are mighty.  We have a great club that does great work and serves as wonderful stewards to our Appleton Rotary Foundation funds.  Our endowments support projects in our community and around the world.

I wanted to share a little reminder of a few things we should be very proud of from this past year:

• We saw a presentation by Egide that showed the years of support our club has provided in refugee camps in Rwanda and Uganda ranging from literacy, healthcare access and environmental preservation.
• We served meals at the Salvation Army with Indus each month.
• We started supporting The Monthlies efforts to end period poverty by packing supplies monthly.
• We learned we have given out over $1 million in grants, awards, and scholarships over the past 20 years.
• We received the districts FIRST EVER reverse global grant in support of FFFV thanks to a multi-year effort by Sridhar, Barb, and President Erin.
• AND, don’t underestimate our check writing because last week I learned that we are the FIRST IN THE DISTRICT in terms of per capita gift giving at an average of $137.31 per member for 2023-2024.

So, thank you to ALL of you. Thank you to the board, who is a wonderful group of dedicated  folks that do all the behind the scenes stuff to make sure that the committees can focus on their work.  BTW, I know I still owe you a party of some kind.  Now I might have time to plan it.

Thank you to the executive committee that includes Ron, Erin, Garrett and recently added Holly.  Thank you to Holiday’s for serving as our host location for this past year.  

Thank you to Rick and Jeff for their amazing set up, hospitality and disassembly.  If it wasn’t for you, I would be carrying my name tag around in my purse every week! Thank you to Barb for being our AV team.

Thank you to Holidays.  As long as we are “A service club with an eating problem,” (as someone who shall not be named says) having a location that not only accommodates us weekly, but has great AV, food, wonderful service, and allows us to keep a bizarre combination of things in their storage area is something that cannot be underestimated and I am very grateful to their entire team.

Finally, thank you to Kathy. She is the secret ingredient that keeps our club ticking. 

I am grateful for having this opportunity to serve Rotary in this capacity. 

With that, I am looking forward to continuing to be a member of this mighty club and seeing what we do next in the service or Rotary. 

Colleen Rortvedt