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Rotary International and its Foundation
Rotary International, founded in 1905, is now a network of more than 1.2 million members in more than 31 314 clubs in 165 countries and 36 geographical regions. Members are business and professional leaders united in a commitment to the Object of Rotary, exemplified in the motto, ‘Service Above Self.’ The purpose of Rotary International is to provide service to both the clubs and the more than 500 Rotary districts into which they are organised.
Rotary programs fall into one of four ‘avenues’ of service: Club Service, Vocational Service, Community Service and International Service. Through these four avenues, programs are devised to serve youth, the elderly and the disabled, to promote literacy, to protect the environment, to encourage high ethical standards, and to advance international understanding and world peace.
Rotary International offers to clubs and districts a wide variety of activities: World Community Service, Youth Exchange, world fellowship activities, intercountry committees, Rotary Volunteers, and related programs. These activities are designed for district-to-district, or club-to-club, or even Rotarian-to-Rotarian interchange.
Rotary offers even further opportunities within the avenue of International Service, which include a menu of programs that require worldwide support from Rotary clubs everywhere. These are the programs of The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International.
The Rotary Foundation offers opportunities for Rotary clubs and districts to combine their strengths and carry out larger service activities than would ever be possible at the individual club or district level.
It is because of the combined efforts of Rotarians worldwide that the Foundation can:
.Offer one of the world's finest and largest private international scholarship programs, sending 1 200 men and women to study abroad each year
·Offer its Group Study Exchange program, which sends more than 2 000 men and women abroad each year to learn about life and culture in another country
·Fund its Humanitarian Grants programs — Matching Grants, Helping Grants, Health, Hunger and Humanity (3-H) Grants, 3-H Planning Grants, Discovery Grants, and new Opportunities Grants — and its Peace Programs
·Fund such efforts as the Rotary Grants for University Teachers, Grants for Rotary Volunteers and Discovery Grants
·Mobilize the global drive that has made great strides in eradicating polio
For legal and tax liability reasons, The Rotary Foundation is organised as a separate corporation. Like its parent, Rotary International, it is a not-for-profit corporation in the State of Illinois, USA, and is qualified for tax exemption under the laws of the USA.
Contributions to the Foundation qualify for charitable tax deductions in the USA and other countries where such arrangements have been successfully negotiated. Unlike Rotary International, it has but a single avenue of service, international, and a single purpose: to support the efforts of Rotary International to achieve world understanding and peace through international humanitarian, educational and cultural exchange programs.
The Rotary Foundation is a vital part of the whole of Rotary International — it gives Rotary clubs and districts the opportunity to join together in significant International Service activities.
A Brief History
Rotarians the world over readily recognise and identify the name of Paul P. Harris as the founder of Rotary International. Less well known, even to Rotarians, is the name of Arch C. Klumph. He, too, was an early president of Rotary International, the sixth, serving in 1916-17, and it was he who proposed to the 1917 Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the creation of an ‘endowment fund for Rotary... for the purpose of doing good in the world in charitable, educational, and other avenues of community progress.’
The proposal was successful, and the fund became a reality with receipt of its first contribution — $26.50 from the Rotary Club of Kansas City, Missouri, USA. The gift represented the surplus of funds left over from the 1918 Convention in that city. It marked the beginning of what has now become a multimillion-dollar philanthropic enterprise.
Following are some milestones in the history of Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation:
1905: Rotary International founded by Paul R Harris and a small group of associates.
1917: Arch C. Klumph, a founding member and sixth president of Rotary, proposes creation of an endowment fund.
1928: The fund grows to $5,739, is given legal recognition and renamed The Rotary Foundation (TRF). Five trustees named to ‘hold, invest, manage, and administer’ all of its property and, with approval of the RI Board of Directors, to ‘expend the corpus of the income therefrom, as a single trust, for the furtherance of the purposes of RI.’
1929: The US Stock Market crashes, ushering in the Great Depression and difficult times for The Rotary Foundation.
1930: The Rotary Foundation's first grant — $500 — is made to the International Society of Crippled Children.
1939-45: World War II hinders development of The Rotary Foundation.
1947: Paul Harris dies. He had requested that any memorial gifts be given to the then dormant Rotary Foundation. Donations flooded in and, by June 1948, more than $1 million had been contributed, nearly twice as much as over the previous 30 years.
1947-48: The Foundation's first educational program begins — international graduate scholarships to enhance world understanding and peace, now known as Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships.
1954-55: Contributions to the Foundation exceed $500 000 annually.
1956: District governors begin appointing Foundation committees to assist in promoting The Rotary Foundation's objective and to serve as liaisons with the RI Secretariat.
1957: Paul Harris Fellow Recognition begins for donors giving at least $1 000.
1964-65: Contributions to the Foundation exceed $1 million annually. Matching Grants program begins, then called Grants for Activities in Keeping with the Objective of The Rotary Foundation.
1965-66: Group Study Exchange (GSE) program begins, growing rapidly as an avenue for improving international understanding.
1978: Health, Hunger and Humanity (3-H) program created to help improve health, alleviate hunger, and enhance human and social development.
1979: Trustees approve $760 000 grant for five-year polio immunisation plan in the Philippines, which had experienced annual epidemics of the crippling disease. Grants for Rotary Volunteers, spawned by 3-H program, begins with medical and dental professionals donating their services in refugee camps in Southeast Asia before expanding to many other professions.
1981: The number of Trustees is increased to the current number of 13, providing for representation from each of the six geographical regions of the Rotary world.
1984-85: Contributions to the Foundation climb to $24 million annually. PolioPlus program officially becomes a separate Foundation program.
1985: RI Board of Directors adopts the goal of immunising 500 million children in the developing world against polio, in the hope of helping to eliminate polio by the year 2000, with official certification in 2005, Rotary's 100th anniversary.
1990: Carl P. Miller Discovery Grants begin, subsidising travel and related expenses for club and district representatives to investigate and plan International Service projects.
1993: At the RI Convention in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, a child is immunized against polio, representing the 500 millionth child to receive vaccine through PolioPlus.
1994: Permanent Fund Initiative begins, expanding the Rotary Endowment and providing future earned income.
1995: Number of Paul Harris Fellows reaches 500 000.
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