Becoming BY JACQUELYN FOGEL Building Community and Having Fun
transition in membership. We have actively recruited young millennials into the club, and had just elected a 26-year-old president. We have found that the Millennials have some different ideas about what service in a community means. We have an exceptionally suc- cessful golf outing that raises and impressive amount of money in one day, but it does not reach out to the gen- eral public. Like many other service organizations, Rotary was needing some updating to keep its member- ship strong, and the younger people who were coming in were not content with many of the old ideas for recruiting members and keeping us viable in our com- munity. Their idea of community service extended far beyond our traditional support of the local schools with scholarships and sports field lighting. They wanted us to be visible to a larger population of residents. The selling of the idea to the three organizations was frighteningly easy. Of course it did not hurt that I am the current president of KMKC and KYP and a two-time past president of my Rotary Club. I already have a proven track record with the organizations, but I had never before attempted anything quite this large in scale, and
May 13, 2017 dawned cool, but sunny and dry. For Wisconsin that was a small miracle just by itself. But the magic did not end with the weather. It was a day many of us had worked hard for 5 months to pull together. We called it our Joint Fundraiser in the Park – or The Community Dog Walk & Wash. It was an outdoor festival for neighbors and dogs, and it was
an enormously fun event. We even raised a little money! In one way, this was a unique event because it involved three non-profit organizations coming together to manage it. We had never before tried to pull organi- zations together, and we were amazed at the successes we had combining the strengths and contacts of the 3 community-based non-profit organizations. Kettle Moraine Kennel Club (KMKC) joined forces with my non-profit, Keep Your Pets, Inc (KYP). and the Slinger- Allenton Rotary Club to jointly sponsor the festival. A
I knew I was going to need a lot of volunteer help if it was going to succeed. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people in all three organizations who immediately vol- unteered to work on the project. We called ourselves The Steering Committee and they appointed me chair because I had regular contact with all three groups. We started meeting on a regular basis just two months after the initial idea was presented at Rotary. The first thing the committee did was to decide what each organiza- tion expected from the event.
steering committee of volunteers from all three organizations was formed, and they began to meet regularly starting in November 2016. The idea for this event was actually hatched at a “fireside” meeting of our local Rotary Club last August. We were looking for another event to raise money we were losing by dropping a Comedy-Night fundraiser. And we were also looking for a way to re- introduce Rotarians to our com- munity as a group of real people, not just hidden checkbooks that
Rotary clearly wanted a visual presence in the commu- nity, and they also wanted a successful fundraiser to fill the gap in their budget. Keep Your Pets, Inc wanted public visibility and funds to continue their mission to keep families in crisis together with their pets. Kettle Moraine Kennel Club wanted public visibility in a non- competitive environment. They wanted the community to be introduced to pure-bred dogs and breeders in a relaxed, comfortable setting to counter some of the bad publicity originating from Animal Rights groups. They also wanted a venue to increase local awareness of our all-breed dog show in June. KMKC did not need to use the event as a fundraiser because their shows are typi-
funded school scholarships and fire department equip- ment. The lightbulb in my head went off because, as president of Kettle Moraine Kennel Club, we were also looking for a way to introduce ourselves to the public outside of our annual dog show. I had read in a Rotary Magazine about the success other clubs had partnering with local non-profits to raise funds. So my thinking immediately went to joining forces with KMKC and another local dog-related non-profit, Keep Your Pets to sponsor a dog related fundraising event in the commu- nity. I don’t know if this idea would have caught any wind in its sails if our Rotary Club had not been in a recent
88 • S how S ight M agazine , S eptember 2017
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