From the President's Desk

Good Morning All,

Today is the start of a new financial year and more importantly to us the start of a new Rotary year. LIGHT UP ROTARY, the theme for this year, will be our task going forward.

Tonight, I am sending a message about Lighting up Birdsville for the RFDS.  Incidentally, last Thursday Night Ian and Heather received an award at the RFDS Annual Awards Night in Brisbane for their magnificent effort with the Mt. Isa house renovation project.  We must also congratulate our member Tara who went to Mt. Isa and all the other volunteers from Rotary Clubs and Communities far and wide who were involved in this mammoth task in hot conditions.

Birdsville this year, at the moment communications are thin, another meeting today and not a lot more information.  What do we do?  So here is what we do, I have discussed more effective ways of raising money other than food sales. The thinking is we need to be providing an on the ground Community Service where the RFDS clips the ticket on the way through, in other words in the case of the Black Tie Ball or Cocktail party for example, the ticket cost includes a $10 donation to the RFDS, so they sell 300 tickets, RFDS gets $3000, Rotary provides 20 or so workers at that function and it goes so smooth they will sell 400 tickets the Next Year.

Maybe there is a $1 on the entry ticket and that brings in $6000 and we roster on/off selling gate tickets.  If it is $2 that becomes $12k. There is a need for Children's entertainment, maybe we know someone who has this gift and they pick up a donation for providing this service.  WE need to better man and promote the donation cans, have them at every food outlet, plus the Race Day, Servo etc. and if we raised $1100 last year with the can sitting at our hamburger stall, then that may be $3k, I am thinking $20k is an achievable target and we have no risk.  But that won't happen this year as this year is going to run like last year as there is no time to implement anything like this in 8 weeks. This will take a year in normal discussions with management to sell the need for change; I am prepared to go this way in future.  Is there any support for this radical plan?  Please let me know, or BOO very loudly so I can hear you.

This Saturday the e-Club is selling raffle tickets again at The Gold Coast Suns game, we have four volunteers already but we would like five or six, so please contact me if you wish to help.

Have a great week,

Cheers

Geoff 

PS: We now have our own account with GotoMeeting, so out meeting ID has changed.  For your records, the new one is 166-064-245 or follow the links from the eClub website!