New Projects Committee

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2008 New Member Class - Jeff Mason, Chair 

Overview
As a follow-up to the creation of the “Top Gear” New Member Class of 2007 the Board of the Rotary Club of Denver 31 encouraged the creation of the New Member Class of 2008. To help our new class bond together and to learn more about the values of Rotary we were granted $15,000 to donate as a class. Due to current economic conditions, the Class of 2008 elected to return $2,500 of this amount to the Board to allow the Class of 2009 to have $10,000 for their class project.

The general guidelines were: this was all the money that the Board was to grant and we were to decide how to distribute the funds as a class.

Process
With the very helpful guidance of Peg Johnston, an initial small group of class members met to discuss organization of the class and how to implement a process to distribute the funds.

Most of our initial group of 32 class mates met at Rocky Mountain PBS in February to develop our process of nomination and selection of our class project. A set of criteria were discussed and agreed to and several projects were suggested in a brainstorming session. Subsequent meetings of a quorum of class mates settled on the following criteria to guide our decision:
• Local / International nature of the project
• Sustainability: how will the project continue after our donation
• Project Partners: well can we recruit other partners to the project
• Impact of the Project: on the beneficiaries of the project
• Non Competition: would the project compete with others already engaged by the club
• Recognition: will the project provide recognition for Club 31
• Rotary Four-Way Test: would the project meet the four-way test
• Class Engagement: would the project allow for several class members to participate

Seven projects were nominated and the class chose two projects for our final selection – a water project in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and Super School News at Rocky Mountain PBS.

Follow-up
Since the initial activity of the first part of the year, the class has blended in to the Club as a whole with occasional follow-up activities. Top Gear has actively encouraged all new club members to participate with them.

In my opinion, the “Class Project” concept does effectively introduce new members to our large club to the process and philanthropy of Rotary while allowing the same new members to develop closer personal ties. 

Respectfully,

Jeff Mason