Pledge and Invocation:
President Samantha Maruzzelli brought the meeting to order at 12:15 PM at Purkey’s Pink Apple with Mike Markovitz reciting the 4-Way Test and leading the Pledge of Allegiance and Dave Wilson giving the Invocation.
Guests:
Peter Quigg – guest speaker
Club News:
Secretary’s Report – Carol Ziomek
Everything updated on website and Facebook.
Treasurer’s Report – Ann Way for Sandy Lane
Nothing new.
Ice Cream Social for Exchange Students – For Anne Sehne
Anne needs 10 volunteers at the High School cafeteria on Sept 6 at 2 PM for an ice cream social. It is an in-service day for the teachers and the exchange students will get to meet the teachers.
Wyo Cty Fair – Pres. Samantha Maruzzelli
Please sign up for a 4 hr slot at the ticket booth on Saturday, Sept 2.
Road Side Clean up – Norm Kelly
It will be the last Sat of Sept. A sign up sheet was passed around for road side clean up on Sept 30.
Best Non-Profit Organization – Pres. Samantha Maruzzelli
Past President Ann Way accepted the award from the Wyo Cty Examiner/Advance readers poll at the Dietrich Theater on Thursday, Aug 17.
Past President Ann Way (left) and President Samantha Maruzzelli
District News – Norm Kelly
District Hurricane Harvey flood donation plans will be published in the District newsletter tomorrow.
Our District 7410 achieved over our $150K goal for donations to the Rotary Foundation for 2016-2017.
AG Norm was in Forest City for a Rotary meeting on Monday and they will have a wine Festival the Sat before Valentine’s Day 2018.
Exchange Students
Ann Way met Nicholas (Nico), who will be living for 6 months with the Kosloski family. They went to Rehoboth Beach for the weekend before school starts in Tunkhannock. They are a new host family.
Harvest & Wine Festival - Ron Furman
A sign-up sheet was passed around for members to select their duty assignments for the Festival. Ron indicated that the Endless Mountains Tourist Bureau is going through lots of rack cards.
Ann Way reported that there are 38 Rotary lounge and 610 online tickets sold so far, plus John Hovan remarked that he sold 22.
Drug Take Back Committee – Frank Oliver
Everything is on schedule both for PR for the next Drug Take Back event on Oct 28 and for outreach at the Not One More Rally on Sat. Sep 9.
Global Committee – Norm Kelly
The global committee is meeting today after this meeting. They are preparing the global grant application.
Norm commented that the Slate Belt global grant was approved yesterday.
Our next Meeting will be Sept 7, Donna Fetzko will speak about Relaxation Techniques including breathing & yoga poses.
President Samantha Maruzzelli adjourned the meeting at 1:30 PM.
Guest Speaker:
Peter Quigg
Community Foundation of the Endless Mountains
Community Foundation of the Endless Mountains
Peter is President of the Community Foundation of the Endless Mountains. The Foundation is an independent, non-profit financial institution that assists donors, both individual and organizations, with the long-range planning of their support for charities in the Endless Mountains. They provide information, ideas, professional assistance and manage Funds that benefit charities by protecting the investment, achieving growth and providing a perpetual source of income.
The Foundation has been in existence since 1999 and manages assets of approx. $15M with grants of approx. 5% of each endowment per year.
Some of the grants are in the form of scholarships under the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) Program. Corporations can direct their PA taxes to them. The money can also be used to fund unfunded projects in schools and keep taxes working in your local communities instead of the whole state. In Jan they will announce the formation of Commonwealth Charitable Managements and it will administer the EITC program.
10 yrs ago, the Community Fdn worked with Lackawanna & Susquehanna areas for school Fdns. They are now meeting with the Tunkhannock Areas School District (TASD) and breathing new life into the TASD Foundation. In 2-3 years, the TASD Foundation should be quite robust and will be using more EITC funds to benefit TASD.
So, any businesses or corporations who pay state taxes, should look into the Foundation (no donation is too small) to utilize the EITC program. EITC is a pass through and they have up to 2 years to spend the money.
Organizations can also establish funds that they can use for projects. Kiwanis Montrose, Lions Club Montrose have established funds with them.
They charge endowments with no application forms a 1% management fee. Endowments that have application process (i.e. college scholarships) are charged a 2% of fund management fee. They work with the Vanguard Group for investments.
