At our weekly meeting last Thursday, we held a brainstorming session to come up with some new fundraising ideas for this Rotary year in addition to our Flags For Heroes project. As I mentioned last week, the pandemic wiped out all our major fundraising events. This year we are dipping into the funds held in our Foundation investment accounts to fund our Giving Budget but we want to mitigate the need to have to do this again next year if the Run With Rotary doesn’t happen next Spring.
After I compared him to Nostradamus for his accurate prediction way back in March of the cancellation of FunFest, a Rotarian at last week’s meeting has rechristened Josh Turner as Joshtradamus. At our Installation Dinner now scheduled for 9/17, Joshstradamus will officially reveal his prediction for whether the Run With Rotary will be happening or not. In the meantime, as People of Action, we need to come up with alternatives.
The brainstorming session went well – good participation and lots of good ideas. We didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing the pros and cons each of each of these ideas. The purpose was more to identify possibilities and then later we will flush them out and narrow them down to pick one (or maybe two) to implement. If you want to add to this list, please send me an email. As I’m one of those people who can’t read their own handwriting even minutes after writing it, a huge thank you to Beth Desai for jotting these down at the meeting.
- Rubber Ducky Community Race – this is an event done by several other Rotary clubs (none of them too close to us). People buy numbered rubber ducks and they “race” them in a creek. Kids can decorate them and keep them afterwards. The winners get some sort of prizes.
- Cornhole Tournament
- Chili Cook Off
- Install Lucite Change Boxes at Area Businesses
- Golf Tournament
- Virtual Silent Auction
- Virtual Fitness Challenge
- Restaurant Day (or Week) – join forces with Township and MBA to promote and then we would get a portion of sales for that day (or week).
- Sell District 50/50 Tickets
- Virtual Run
- Virtual Bike Ride
Again, the idea is to come up with a fundraiser that works in this pandemic environment. In other words, something either outside without huge crowds or virtual. We will discuss these and any other ideas at the next Board meeting on August 10th which will be held via Zoom.
But let’s not overlook our current project, Flags For Heroes. Operating under a very compressed timeframe, the FFH committee has gotten it off the ground beautifully. Now it’s everyone’s turn to sell some flags. As fundraisers go, it’s a pretty easy “ask”. Don’t put it off until the end of August – do it now. Please.
People come up to me all the time.. on the street..at the grocery store..at the park.. all with the same question “Why can’t you write President Messages more like Tony? He gave us inspiration and provided hope. All you do is badger and pester”. The answer is simple - you can’t spell Nagy without n-a-g.
Rotarically Yours,
Zoltan Nagy
President
Rotary Club of Montgomery/Rocky Hill (NJ)