CRACKING THE CODE
by
Greg Lynch
President (2003-2004), Rotary Club of
Rotary giving. We all believe in it. It’s just part of what we
do as Rotarians. It makes so much of what Rotary “is”, possible. Scholarships,
Youth Exchange, of course the global elimination of Polio, clean water,
literacy, AIDS/HIV. It’s a long list of initiatives and a long list
accomplishments in which we Rotarians can be justly proud to have participated
- giving, together, to make a better world.
These opening lines are a strong and simple belief. My belief.
Our belief. Yet the full picture is more complex. I found that out, the hard
way, this year as President of my Club. You see, our Club has its own
Foundation, which has Trustees who direct our own, well thought-out, program of
giving. We support a local hospital. This years we have given to up-grade its
emergency room with bio-toxic capability and have purchased a new ambulance for
them. We support a soup kitchen uptown. When they needed a truck, we helped, ditto
for a new oven and up-grading the kitchen’s electrical system. We have
installed two computer labs in the community. One of those labs has a group of
kids in East Harlem winning prizes for computer graphics, traveling to
Because
One of the goals of my year as President has been 100%
participation in the Paul Harris fellowship program. We made it! Some New York
Rotarians joined as sustaining members, while many contributed to become new
Paul Harris Fellows. Everybody did something. We have ended up with some forty
new Paul Harris awards this year and our two, very first, major donors. So why
did I get such negative feed-back from some folks in the Club who felt that
this effort was contrary to our own New York Foundation giving campaign. At the
same time why was there some substantial resistance in our Club to R.I.’s
request for a commitment of $100 from every Rotarian every year. Shucks, our
per capita giving is about $400 per person this year. I’ve spent a lot of time
puzzling this out, and I am still trying to make sense of it all.
Some of it is obvious. There is a feeling, in the Club, of
competition between R.I. Foundation giving and giving to our own Club’s
Foundation. This is true, even though many of the projects we do through our
local Foundation could be done with and through R.I. Sure we have participated
with matching grant programs through our District, but we don’t typically get
involved in the matching grant program with R.I. at our own Club level. Besides,
when we have tried to do so, we’ve been told it was the wrong time, R.I. wasn’t
giving any more grants this year, we missed the deadline, R.I. had to cut back
on grants because of the decline in its portfolio - you get the idea. The
answer was no. So we went off and did our own thing. It seems that the Rotary
Clubs that manage to do matching grants has certain positive character traits:
patience, persistence and a strong and compelling need in their own backyards.
I’m sure there are thousands of examples that could prove me wrong. All I know
is that, in our neck of the woods, it has just got to be done in a “New York
minute”, and that is not the R.I. matching grant program
Then there is the thing about contributing to the Rotary
International general giving campaign. As I understand it, the money is
invested by R.I. for three years and then something like half of it comes back
to the District. Well I’ve been fairly active in our District, chaired district
conferences, attended many leadership meetings. I never heard about that money
that came back, and our Club has given substantial amounts to the R.I. general
purpose fund. Now if that money did come back and if our Club were informed and
maybe even consulted on the disposition of funds it had originally contributed
- well then, maybe the folks in our Club Foundation would have a better
feeling. Maybe then we would start to understand that it is all part of the
same, seamless cloth.
Last year, I attended the Zone Institute of the Rotary
International Foundation. I’ll go again this year, coming up next month. It
amazes me how carefully and well thought out is the Rotary International giving
program. It merits our respect and careful consideration. It’s also become
fairly complex and, naturally, more oriented toward major donors. Also, as it
and Rotary enter the 21st Century, it is becoming more removed from the
grass-roots spontaneity of traditional Rotary giving. It is often the kind of
giving that a Rotarian has to do with a financial planner on one side, a C.P.A.
on the other and the family attorney on call to review the planned giving
documentation in the context of the estate plan. All of this represents the due
diligence of a major charitable organization moving forward. I have been an
estates & trust attorney for many years and recognize the quality and
commitment that the Rotary International giving program represents .... but I
still like the Paul Harris Fellowship.
I like Rotary giving that feels like Rotary, that reminds me
more of Service above Self and the Four Way Test. That’s what I want to be
thinking about when I give, the Rotary values and traditions and promises, more
than I do about the strategic advantages of planned giving utilizing the
mechanism of an off-shore trust. I know, I know, I am not a realist. So what
ever happened to the “Rotary Dream”?
The tangibility of a Paul Harris fellowship has always appealed
to me. First, I like the history; I like the man; I like the stories - yes, and
lore - of our Rotary founding fathers, and yes I want to hear more about the
great women of Rotary in this new century. I like the lore of rags to riches,
the early meetings in first members’ offices and homes in Chicago and then
along the early 20th century routes of commerce - San Francisco, Oakland,
Seattle, then back east to New York and Boston and on and on. I like the heft
of the medal and the elegance of the blue and yellow ribbon. I like seeing
those stones on a Paul Harris medal, sapphires, rubies, diamonds. Why no
emeralds; I like emeralds. I like the thrill in the voice of a small town
dentist in
How do we stay true to basic Rotary values and, at the same
time, manage smart giving? In our Club we are not there yet. And, we won’t get
there by R.I. fund raisers coming by our meetings to shake the tree. I want a
Rotary where all men and woman of all decent enterprise have a place in our
Rotary world, not just the wealthy; where service and ethics and fellowship is
always integral to our purpose, as much as is the major giving and global
campaigns to do good. I want to know that the seed I plant through my Club
giving will transform into a mighty oak, yes, and I also want to hear the peels
of laughter from that little girl we sponsored at a local hospital. What I do
not want to hear are grumblings from my members that the money we send to R.I.
is used to sustain lavish life styles of the people out of
Best regards,
Greg