Program for July 16, 2018: Sara Sothmann - Unity Point Health
Invocation: Paul Fitzpatrick
Happy News: Diana Gradert has tickets for the Arts council fundraiser on August 5th. Jeff Barnhardt will be playing. Keith Porter was happy to attend his grand daughters baptism on Sunday. JoAnne Ruby - wife of Mike Ruby was our visitor today.
Program: Our program was Mike Ruby speaking on his experiences of being the District 6000 Governor. He thanked the club for carrying out a successful year and commended Erika Cox on the great job that she did being president. Mike believes that the next couple years will be great as well, under the leadership of Shane Orr and then Jessica Wittman. Mike joined Rotary in 1979. There are 3750 members in District 6000, down 500 in the last 10 years. District 6000 has 65 clubs and 2 satellite clubs. The average district has 2250 members. Downtown Des Moines club was established in 1911 - it is the oldest in our district. Norwalk is the youngest - established in 2016. The most common meeting day throughout the district is Tuesdays, with Friday being the least common. 17 clubs meet at golf/country clubs, 8 at hotels, and 19 at restaurant or event centers. Club sizes range from 10 to 331. Our District 6000 office is in Pella, IA. There are 9 members on our district board, this is a 7 year commitment. Mike said, "JoAnne is the wind beneath my wings". She encouraged him to become District 6000 Governor. In November of 2014 Mike and JoAnne interviewed to become District 6000 Governor. The spouse is a big factor when new governor is chosen. Mike is very happy with the 3 pilots he did this year. #1 - All Rotarians in district 6000 get the newsletter mailed to them. #2 - the world bicycle relief project. Mike had 2 goals for this. Have all clubs in district 6000 participate and raise enough money to buy 400 bikes. Results: all 66 clubs participated and enough $ was raised to buy 1128 bikes!!!!! Great!!!! #3 - Toast to Rotary - having 5 smaller district conferences instead of one large event. In the past the average attendance was 275, this year 654 Rotarians attended!! With 62 clubs participating. Awesome!!! Mike and JoAnne have driven 29,688 miles being governor. He has visited all 66 clubs. He said that being District 6000 Governor was the experience of a life time. He is glad he took the plunge.
Next meeting is July 16, 2018 at the Rendezvous.