Jeannette Maré, Ben’s Bells founder and Executive Director, will lead “A Conversation on Kindness”, an in depth discussion of the challenges and opportunities we encounter in every interaction as we strive to create a kinder community. During this presentation, Jeannette will reflect on her own personal experiences with kindness in the face of devastating grief, as well as her work with Ben’s Bells Project and the power of kindness to transform people and communities. She will discuss the emerging body of research on the science of kindness.  Presentations focus on any of the following topics: change, leadership, grief and self-kindness.

 

In addition to Bell distributions, Ben’s Bells Project provides kindness education programming for more than 300 schools, organizations and businesses. Ben‘s Bells is honored to be a part of the emerging field of multidisciplinary research that demonstrates the powerful effects of kindness on individuals’ long term health and on the overall quality of life in communities.

 

 

Jeannette is the founder and Executive Director of Ben’s Bells Project.  Jeannette’s leadership has anchored the organization through remarkable growth, including the opening of three studios, collaborating with hundreds of local organizations and recruiting over 25,000 annual volunteers. As part of her vision, Ben’s Bells has become nationally recognized and “kindness” is becoming part of the nation’s collective consciousness.  Before becoming full time Executive Director of Ben’s Bells, Jeannette was faculty at the University of Arizona teaching discourse analysis. She holds a Masters Degree in Linguistics from Gallaudet University in Washington D.C.  Jeannette lives in Tucson and is grateful to have the opportunity to combine her two passions – teaching and community building – in her role with Ben’s Bells.

I’ll start by repeating MATT NANCE, who celebrated another birthday this week. MATT’s quote from Ronald Reagan goes something like this. “When faced with choosing one of two evening activities, pick the one that gets you home by 9:00 PM!” In my world, I think it is more likely 8:00 PM…

 

Congratulations to our two new Paul Harris Society members, Mike Anderson and Jon Wang.

 

Today was a raffle day at Rotary. I also attended a morning breakfast meeting that held a raffle. I’m happy to report I was 0 for 2 and maintaining my perfect record so far this year of having yet to buy a winning ticket!

 

Just a reminder, the RCOT Holiday Social mixer is Wednesday 16 December at 6:00 PM and will be held at Barrio Brewery in downtown Tucson.

 

GARY HIRSCH provided a brief summary of the club’s involvement in the Ride to End Polio. In total, including matching funds from the Gates Foundation, our club helps raise $10M toward this endeavor, which is about 10% of the approximately $105M raised by all Rotary. Great job and let’s keep this effort rolling!

 

Frank Presson, Rotary District 5500 Governor, joined us to provide a “State of the State of Rotary”. He provided some interesting information that I’ll share again here. (1) District 5500 encompasses all AZ south of PHX and extending to CA and NM. (2) There are a total of 54 Rotary Clubs plus Interact and Rotaract clubs in the district. (3) In general, US membership in Rotary is on the decline. (4) Results from a recent study showed that 8 of 10 people asked did not know about Rotary. (5) Rotary is starting a marketing campaign focused on three areas; Branding, Doing Projects Locally, and Vocation. Hopefully these efforts will help Rotary Clubs, ours included, attract more young professionals into the fold.

 

Have a great week!

 

 

There exists a fundamental difference pertaining to organizations that give away money. At one extreme is the practice of disbursing all money collected during a period before (or as) the period ends. Quite different is the system of retaining some funds for use in future periods. There are justifications, and strong advocates, for each method.

 

What are reasons to carry a balance into next year, or, more decisively, to endow funds so that the principal can never be spent? It is the uncertainty of maintaining donation levels that is most-often cited. Endowments and reserves enable charitable organizations to weather swings in income from year to year. Many groups survived the 2008 recession only by virtue of having held reserves.

 

If you don’t have the funds to continue a solution you implemented last year, you risk losing all you have gained to date. College education is a multi-year process. If the student has two years of scholarship, but then has the third year need unmet, what are the chances that education picks up without a hitch one, or two, or three years later when funds are again available? Can research on disease treatment drastically expand and contract each year to match annual grant fund supply? If you don’t have sustainable income, you can hardly make reliable multi-year commitments.

 

Building a new children’s clinic could require $100,000 in year one, $1,000,000 in year two, and $5,000,000 in year three as concept proceeds through construction. Are you certain you can pull in those second and third year amounts after bringing in, and spending, “only” the $100,000 needed in year one? If you fail in fundraising, the project stalls and very likely flops. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to raise $1.2 million in year one, $1.8 million in year two, and $3.1 million in year three? That means you bank some of what you take in for as long as two years, even though there are other, very worthy, community causes.

 

In contrast to the assertion [last column] that donors are less generous when money is not entirely spent each year, there is a concept that some donors will not give unless there is a known level of substantial, baseline support. No one wants their relatively small gift to go to waste due to being just too tiny to have an effect. But a substantial sum can be amassed from a multitude of small-gift-givers whose confidence in the effectiveness of their action originates from a large, guaranteed grant. That grant can be funded from endowment earnings.

 

It helps the discussion to concede that all the holdings in endowments and reserves in all the world’s foundations and governments (duh, ‘government reserves’ is an oxymoron) could be spent this year and we would still not address all needs. And even if they did, next year will bring more needs, with every typhoon, famine, drought, and new disease. Obviously, holding reserves is necessary to generate investment income (if that is a goal).

 

“Save some” vs “save none” - We should all be able to agree on the exceptions to a universal rule. Cutting off polio immunization for six months so we can “save” some money for next year’s immunizations is foolish – gains are entirely reversible if we don’t keep up a full-court press. Similarly, perishables such as fresh food and blood must be distributed contemporaneously. Even freezing foodstuffs for a year from now might be unacceptable if starvation will eliminate an entire population before then.

 

Our Rotary Club of Tucson Foundation and the RI Foundation both follow the endowment/reserves model. Grants are based upon investment earnings, current donations, past promises, and future expectations.

 

Beyond the few easy-to-decide cases, where is your comfort level? Closer to give-it-all-away-today or to allocate-a-measured-dose-over-time?