Welcome to spring and all the events of that Rotary and our District 5610 will give you as you enter this time of year. We were certainly excited and pleased to see many of our district’s new club presidents for 2018-2019 at the President Elect Training (PETS) in Mitchell last weekend. First, our district needs to continue working on our giving to the Rotary Foundation, as we are just a little above 71% of our giving goal for this year at $142,098. Our goal is $200,000 for 2017-2018 and of course, our raffle giving conducted at the PETS will give us our district a significant boost and early reports show that the raffle provided our District with about $50,000 in funds contributed to the foundation. As club foundation chairs and current presidents we need to continue to encourage our clubs with the mission of Rotary and a significant part of our organization is our giving to the Foundation.
    I encourage you to look at all the various Rotary Foundation news on the Rotary.org website. As we are well into the Second Century of The Rotary Foundation, some great things are happening throughout the world because of our involvement in the Foundation. We need to keep in front of ourselves and our clubs all the things The Rotary Foundation has achieved and continues to achieve because of our support of The Rotary Foundation. I encourage you to look at the latest news on how the Polio eradication is developing because of Rotary’s efforts to vaccinate children and raise awareness of polio.
    Perhaps your own club is involved in a District Grant application project and take note of the work that our District and Clubs are doing throughout our district to improve lives and our communities in our district. Thanks to all the hard work and processes that our Grants Chairman Bruce Young has put in place. There is one more grant training on May 21, which Bruce has developed and noted in this newsletter for Grant Training.
    If as your District Foundation Chair, I can do anything to move your club’s involvement in the Rotary Foundation along please feel free to reach out and discuss it with me. Mike.gibson@bankwest-sd.bank.
—Mike Gibson, D5610 Foundation Chair