Annual Giving Dinner
PP Louie Diy, Annual Giving Dinner
The District, led by Global DG Virgilio “Jun” Farcon, Jr. held a successful banquet to honor the new and multiple Paul Harris Fellows and the new and continuing Major Donors last Saturday, November 27, 2010 at the Crowne Plaza Galleria Manila.
The night’s guest speaker was Regional Rotary Foundation Chair (Zone 7-A) PDG Melito “Bimbo” Salazar who gave a rousing speech with an accompanying powerpoint presentation of how the various donations to The Rotary Foundation helps all people globally.
The event was doubly special since District 3800 is the leading donor to TRF amongst all the Districts in Zone 7-A, even higher than our rich zone-mates like Australia and New Zealand. It only goes to show how munificent our Global Rotarians are in D-3800. Again, congratulations to DG Jun and his TRF team headed by PDG Mac Hermoso for receiving this grand distinction during the Rotary Institute in Bangkok, Thailand.
Hosted by the Rotary Club of Mandaluyong, the program was fast-paced and entertaining, ending at the allotted time to allow the various Global Rotarians to continue the fellowship upon adjournment. New Major Donor GP Chito Barazza stretched his generosity further by donating a case of special Korean ginseng wine which was raffled off to the lucky winners, together with the evening’s grand raffle prize of a 19-inch television given by our District Governor himself.
TRF Annual Recognition Night Speech of DG Virgilio Farcon, Jr.
RRFC Bimbo Salazar, DRFC Mac Hermoso, past and future governors and their ladies, DGL Zeny, other Global District Officers, our honorees for tonight, Global Presidents, Global Spouses and Global Rotarians, friends ladies and gentlemen good evening.
Tonight is the highlight of our month long commemoration and celebration of The Rotary Foundation Month. I still remember last July 1, we were in this same hotel during the District Handover and Induction Ceremonies. How time flies so fast and now we are on our fifth month together. I hate to say this but it seems that I can already see and smell the end of our term. Let me just say that as your District Governor, I am very happy with the outcome and it seems that everything is just falling into proper places and let me say in accordance with our plans.
Last July 1, I made a promise that for our first month, we will achieve a TRF collection of $50,000. Do you know how much we made as of July 31, 2010? $53,000 yes thanks to our generous Rotarians and we became number one in the region. Yes District 3800 was number one. At first, I could not believe that this is possible because we are talking of the region where we have our rich neighbors like Australia and New Zealand together with Indonesia and the Philippines. But when the results came out for the month of August, District 3800 was number one again. For the month of September, District 3800 was again number one and last October, for four consecutive months now, our District was again number one both in terms of amount and per capita . We made a promise that by the time we celebrate our Annual Giving Dinner, we will achieve our TRF goal of $150,000. I am pleased, let me say again I am very happy and very pleased to announce that as of today, November 27, our total collections for TRF is now $186,000. Even with our TRF goals, we have lived up to this year’s challenge of bigger, better and bolder TRF performance.
How come we are number one? How did this happen? I always say it is because of the teamwork and hard work of the TRF team. But who are the members of the trf team anyway? PDG Mac Hermoso is our chairman but he only gave $1,000. PDG Efren is our Annual Giving Chair, but he only gave $1,000. As your District Governor, I became a major donor but i only gave $3,500. While we are at the forefront of the TRF team, we are not the only members of the TRF team who made these phenomenal TRF collections possible. The Global District Officers and the Global Presidents are also members of the TRF team and they also contributed much to achieve and reach the record breaking contribution in just less than five months in the amount of $ 186,000. Actually this will become more than $192,000 as of November 30 because DGE Raffy committed to give on November 30 the amount of $6,000. But let me emphasize that even the combined contributions of the TRF team, it is still not enough to explain where the money came from. So how did this happen?
The answer is simple. I compared the number of donors to our foundation for the last two years and the first five months of this Rotary year. Two years ago we had 750 donors while last year we had around 250 donors. On the average, the number was between 300 to 700 donors every year. As compared to this year with barely five months, the number of contributors had already gone up to a record number of 800 donors or an increase already of more than 300% based on last year. This is already an achievement in itself because having 800 Rotarian donors is not a small number. And my challenge to our TRF team is to double this number or increase the number of Rotarian donors giving $100 dollars or more up to one thousand five hundred by June 30 next year. This will be our legacy to our foundation for this Rotary year. We will have the biggest number of Rotarian donors to the foundation. It is not the amount of the contribution but the heart of the donor Rotarians that is important. What is important is his willingness to give regardless of the amount because he or she believes in our foundation.
As of today, we already have around 20,000 dollars actual contribution to the Polio Plus challenge. Even for Polio Plus, our District had already achieved its goal for the year in just five months and we expect to achieve double our goal up to next year.
The good news does not end with our contributions to the foundation. This year, we have also set a record breaking participation in the humanitarian grants programs. With 22 Rotary clubs participating in the humanitarian grants programs, we will have 26 matching grants projects totaling $428,021 dollars or 18,800,000 pesos. The biggest in the history of our District on matching grants projects.
Likewise, this year, for the first time in the history of our district, we were able to give district simplified grants to all the 85 clubs in the total amount of 23,183 dollars or $2,500 dollars per zone except Rizal zone which received a total of $5,000 dollars. Let me acknowledge the support and efforts of our TRF Chair PDG Mac Hermoso and Grants Chair PDG Fabie Enriquez for another first in our District.
In closing, allow me to congratulate and thank all the generous Rotarians from District 3800 for our superb performance for TRF. Yes this time it will be the year of ordinary generous Rotarians doing extraordinary things for the love of rotary and our foundation. Yes this time it will be the year where we will achieve a record of 100% of the clubs giving to The Rotary Foundation. At present there are already 85% of the clubs which gave to the foundation for the first five months of the year. Yes this is the year where we will have 75% of the clubs becoming EREY clubs. Our target is to have as many as one thousand five hundred donors to The Rotary Foundation or 75% of the Rotarians in the district becoming stakeholders and co-owners of the foundation for this year. This is a feat never accomplished before and so difficult to achieve and yet this year, it is now within our reach and in our hands. Yes we must continue to give to The Rotary Foundation so that our foundation can continue to do good in this world, to build more communities and to bridge more continents and to make our foundation bigger, better and bolder than ever.
A pleasant evening to all.
