July 15, 2026 Newsletter

Welcome & Thanks

Thanks to Londa for serving, Greg for greeting, and to Justin, John, and Melissa for their ongoing roles. No outside guests this week.

Announcements

Rotary Gardens. Roger reminded everyone the gardens are a valued community-service effort and asked the club to keep it going. Deborah continues to need people to help water — anyone able to help should let Deborah know. 
Garden text distribution list. Roger read the current list — Dan, Debra, Desiree, Diane, Evelyn, Greg, John, Jon, Josh, Londa, MJ, Melissa, Nick, Roger, Sandy, and Will — and asked anyone who wants to be added or removed to tell Roger, Melissa, or Deborah. (Melissa resets the group when members are added or dropped.)
Garden "Party" (weeding). This Sunday, July 19 at 10:00 a.m.
Bingo — this Saturday. From Mona: food and volunteers at the firehouse no later than 4:15 p.m. — drop your food off by then. Mona thanked everyone who has been volunteering, making, or donating.
Board meeting continuation — tomorrow, Thursday July 16, 7:15 a.m. at the Hampton Inn. Last week's board meeting ran long, so it continues tomorrow. Roger stressed that all members are always welcome at board meetings to see "how the sausage gets made" — a theme he returned to throughout the assembly.
ShelterBox matching gift. Tristan flagged the QR code attached to this morning's minutes for a ShelterBox donation supporting earthquake recovery in Venezuela. An anonymous member has pledged to match donations up to $150. A full ShelterBox runs a couple of thousand dollars, but donations of any size are welcome. If you give, email Tristan and tell him how much so the match can be tracked. 
Boys & Girls Club drivers. Jim had added a note to last week's minutes about drivers needed to support the Boys and Girls Club — details are in last week’s minutes.
Legacy member — Tucker. Diane recognized Tucker, Greg's son, as a Rotary "legacy member" (children of longtime members). Sandy brought Greg into the club; Greg brought Tucker. Diane gave Tucker a pin and the club welcomed him warmly, hoping he'll join permanently. Tucker has already been pitching in on the garden and serving as a student Rotarian.
Acts of service / brags: Jim shared a service story about driving kids to and from the Boys and Girls Club camp — the counselors are wonderful and it brought back his own camp memories. 

Club Assembly

Roger framed the assembly around "the gazillion things" in his agenda, which he described as really his own notes for the year. 

Two entities, two sets of rules

Roger gave an overview of how the club is actually structured, because questions keep coming up. There are two separate legal entities:
  • Brattleboro Sunrise Rotary — the club itself, essentially a social organization (comparable to the Elks or Moose). Under IRS rules it's a 501(c)(4)-type body, like Rotary International itself. Dues, in excess of expenses, aren't taxed, but donations to it are not tax-deductible.
  • Brattleboro Sunrise Rotary Foundation — a 501(c)(3) charity. This is what people can make charitable contributions to
Money raised through fundraising flows into the Foundation and must be used for legitimate charitable purposes — donations to other charities or IRS-approved charitable activity. The Rotary Garden counts as community service, so garden supplies are a legitimate Foundation expense. Anything that benefits members — the changeover, parties — must come out of the club (Sunrise) account, not the charity. Each entity has its own budget and its own bank account, kept strictly separate. A fuller budget will be presented at next month's assembly; the board is reviewing draft budgets now.

Board structure & the goal for the year

Roger's headline concern: the board currently has about as many people on it as were sitting in the room — possibly more than the club needs. Over time he'd like to push more work down into committees coordinated by the board and by committee/event chairs, with more visibility at the club level and less reliance on a once-a-month board meeting doing everything.
His stated central goal: grow newer-member involvement into leadership, while retaining and using the deep experience of senior members. He quoted a line (attributed to Diane's former-club experience) about cleaning out cobwebs and "pissing off the spiders" — and said explicitly he does not want to do that. Tucker joked, "Two weeks in and they're already firing people"; Roger's reply was that he's setting things up so MJ can do the firing next year.

Committees & roles

Roger ran through the committee structure for the year:
Fundraising — Nick (chair). The goal is to maximize fundraising while recognizing two big intangible costs that never show up in the financials: volunteer time and members' own out-of-pocket donations. Roger wants to start capturing hours-per-event-per-person, partly to spot burnout before it happens. Diane will handle the administrative/data side using electronic tools. Volunteers are needed for the fundraising committee to analyze current activities for cost-and-effort effectiveness. Known events: disc golf, dinner raffle ticket sales, bingo, welcome center — Roger wants named volunteers committed to each, not last-minute scrambles. He noted openly that some members are questioning whether the welcome center is worth it, and that the club is now looking at real numbers.
Grants & Scholarships — MJ (chair, as President-Elect). Combined into one committee because that's how the Foundation spends its money, and it's a good way for the incoming PE to learn what the club is really about. Grants and scholarships stay procedurally separate; Deborah continues to run scholarships ("her baby"). Roger wants a clearer, more formal grant-request process, weighing Rotary's emphasis on lasting impact (his example: a former club funding a specialized hospital bed for Grace Cottage — a concrete project with long-term effect).
International — Tristan (chair). Kept as its own distinct lane. Tristan explained the international work is substantively different from local grant-making — more sustained, collaborative, and relationship-driven — and the committee wants to shape its own criteria. It will have its own budget line item (both what it hopes to spend and what it hopes to raise). Roger noted Tristan's depth here — roughly 40 audits of major Rotary International projects and ~20 years doing this work — and framed the goal as systematizing it so it's not solely Tristan-dependent. Diane mentioned connecting Tristan with Jess Kane, president of the Deerfield Valley club, who is interested in a global-grants partnership.
Membership — Kevin (chair). Includes finding, mentoring, developing, and retaining members. Roger stressed getting newer members involved quickly — people join Rotary to be involved. The "newbies" group (Kristen Sullivan was involved) falls under membership.
Socials / Club Service / Club Events — Sandy (chair). The "us" side of the club — and, as several people insisted later, the heart of it.
Foundation Activities — Diane. Coordinating with Rotary International and the District Foundation; includes the Paul Harris Task Force (an ad-hoc group: President-Elect, VP, Foundation chair, and one or two past Paul Harris recipients).
Youth Exchange — Mona. No international exchange in the last year or two; Mona will try to resurrect it.
Student Rotarian contact — MJ.
Public Relations — open. Nobody yet. Roger asked for a volunteer to handle press releases and social-media visibility; Diane will cover the interim and train whoever steps up. "Not rocket science."
Webmaster — Diane (interim). Diane is also the district webmaster. Tammy (an honorary member) is taking over the district webmaster role and has agreed to eventually become the club's webmaster too; she taught Diane ClubRunner.

Community service vs. fundraising

Roger drew a deliberate line between the two. He singled out John and Sandy's history tours as a community-service success that happens to bring in real money — but, he said, how much it earns is "almost irrelevant"; the community value and feedback are what matter. Members floated an idea to let people book history tours for adult birthday groups as a way to reward the effort John and Sandy put in.

Communications & Tools

  • Roger asked for members' preferred contact method — text, email, or phone — with the goal of not sending people things they don't want. A few threads:
  • ClubRunner can send to the whole club or to custom distribution lists, and effectively BCCs everyone (you only see your own name). Tristan noted it avoids the "reply-all" pile-up that makes people quietly tune out.
  • Text messaging is best for quick asks (e.g., "can anyone water the garden tonight?") but is a pain to add/remove people from.
  • Searchability: Jim prefers email because he can search it after missing a couple of weeks. A suggestion followed to put "Brattleboro Sunrise" in every email subject line so everything is findable in one search.
  • ClubRunner's volunteer page vs. Sign Up Genius: Roger pitched ClubRunner's volunteer tool as doing what Sign Up Genius does — tasks, hours, who's bringing what — but with better information back to the organizer and no ads. A member gently cautioned him: before switching, talk to Nick and Mona, who already run Sign Up Genius and know it well. Roger accepted this as a suggestion, not a mandate.

Members' feedback on pace & culture

After Roger finished the assembly, several people warmly asked him to slow down and be careful not to over-engineer a club that is already working. Roger received it openly and thanked people repeatedly for it.
Londa led off: she said she loves the relaxed, social character of the club — the brags, hearing about people's kids — and that if it gets "too corporate" she couldn't stay. Her plea was to slow things down, because what makes the club special is its "magical social fluidity." Roger immediately reassured her he isn't trying to cut the social side, agreeing with Londa’s statement that the social connection is " the gasoline that makes the engine go."
Nick followed. He affirmed Roger's effort, then walked through the club's recent arc — during his time as president he focused on getting out of COVID, Josh's term focused on participation, Collier's on direction, Deb's on getting the "vibes" to an all-time high. Nick cautioned that structure can kill creativity and vibe if we’re not careful, and that the club shouldn't "reshape everything". 
Greg added three points: he appreciated being told "no worries" when he once couldn't make the garden; some of today's discussion might belong in a board meeting rather than the full club; and some of this feels "like a solution without a problem" — a lot of it is already working well.
Roger reframed his own concern: it's not an 80/20 participation problem — the breadth of participation here is unusually high. His worry is narrower: individual burnout on specific long-running events (Josh, for instance, handed off disc golf after ten years; Nick has picked it up). Three separate people have told Roger they're unsure about the welcome center — but his stated goal is not to "pull the plug" on something long-standing until there's good information.
Several members reinforced that efficiency can't be the only yardstick:
  • Jim made the point Roger later singled out as one he "hadn't put in": some activities — the welcome center, bingo — are valuable as fun and togetherness, not just labor. When the welcome center is slow, everyone's gabbing behind the table having a good time.
  • Evelyn noted bingo's real return is name recognition in the local community — and that the club's gift baskets are a beloved touch nobody else offers.
  • Diane tied it together: everyone brings a different skill set (she and Roger live 45 minutes out and can't easily water gardens, but bring technical expertise; Tristan brings international depth; MJ is great with kids). The club should ask new members like Desiree and Greg what they want to do — even fund a "newbie" group (some clubs hand new members ~$500 and say "create an event, teach us something new"). Her framing, crediting Londa's social-first point: it's a social club first, and serves the community second — reverse that order and clubs start to decline.
Hours-tracking discussion
 
A related thread on the hours sign-in sheet. Jim finds it intermittent and can't always remember what he did, and suggested chairs simply remind people rather than requiring sign-in. Nick explained he pushed the sheet when he was president to measure how many hours the club actually invests in the community — with a modest participation goal — and at his changeover they found the club had logged hundreds of hours more than anyone expected; he never meant it as "Big Brother," and took the feedback graciously. Londa said she loved the physical sheet precisely because, as a newcomer, it showed her at a glance everything people do — she'd have been far less engaged if she'd had to report it online. General agreement that community-service effort is harder to make visible than concrete fundraising events, and worth capturing for recognition, not surveillance.
 

Close

The meeting closed with the traditional card draw (no winner) and the Rotary Four-Way Test.