Preliminaries

It did not take new President Chuck Kimbrough opened the meeting at 7:30am by banging on an Irish plate.

Brian Evison gave the Invocation, and Bob Bowen introduced visiting Rotarians and guests. Bob asked the visiting Rotarians and guests to share their favorite summer pastime.

TOP

BBRC Fundraising

As John Martinka was about to make his State of the BBRC Fundraising address, Elena Howell, Tamara Dean, and Wendi Fischer came up in very sexy attire to suggest fundraising ideas for John.

L-R: Elena Howell, Wendi Fischer, Tamara Dean & John Martinka

Before they could tell him their ideas, Sayoko Kuwahara, aka Spider Monkey, came up all clad in black and literally threw the image rule book at them. I'm still wondering what Elena, Tamara, and Wendi had in mind!

After all the brouhaha, John raised the following points:

• RI supports the district and the clubs, the district supports the clubs and the clubs support the members in what they want to accomplish.
  
  
• Rotary Strategic Plan
  
  
• We can't have the humanitarian projects we want without successful fundraising.
  
  
• We are like the Three Musketeers in that it's a team effort, all for one and one for all.
  
  
• Fundraising is the #1 thing I've been told by members to work on and is the top BBRC discussion point by far with my advisory team and others.
  
  
• We are a very well-respected club in district 5030 – our District Governors constantly use us as an example of a model club in a lot of areas.
  
  
• We
  
  The Spider Monkey
  have not been the model club in fundraising the last few years and we, that's you, my committee and me, need to change that.
  
  
• Bottom line: We do only two events a year and we all need to participate in each event and get sponsors, outside participants and donors.
  
  
• Mark April 17 on your calendar for the 2011 race and next month we'll have the date for the 2011 golf tournament. Get the date on your schedule now (and March 18-19, 2011, for the retreat).
  
  
• To scale this event we need a longer run to attract more runners, as per YOUR suggestions in my survey. We hope to have a 10K, 5K and kids dash at City Park with Bellevue Square as in-kind sponsor (thanks Katherine) for parking. The city is onboard so far and hopes our route will be approved this week.
  
  
• Hoping for 100% participation from BBRC members as this is a team effort; we all need to get sponsors, donors and most importantly, participants. 20 runners/walkers per member=2,400 plus public=3,000+ participants.
• We're looking for major sponsors and hope to attract a major charity so it spirals up fast.
  
  
• We need to get back to where the raffle and golf raised a net of about $1,000 per member (and we will). I think we can do even better.
  
  
• You say it's tough to find people or sponsors? How about if we spoon-feed you targets?
  
  
• Finally, sponsors — Jon Koshar has been nursing some major sponsors for the race. Jim Carney is heading up a sponsorship team to turn this into a coordinated, year around program. His one neat idea (which has gone over very well with everybody I've test marketed it on): in return for sponsoring the BBRC, we become the community service coordinator for Bellevue companies. For example, when Ron Healey does a home fix-up project it may become 2 or 3 projects and we tie in with one of our sponsors. It could be the "Expedia and BBRC renovation." Or Alex has the "Children's Hospital and BBRC tree planting." We coordinate, provide some labor, and they give us money and lots of bodies.

Pre-season for the race starts in September; the kick-off is in January. It will be a lot of fun, worthwhile and a team effort.

TOP

Charity Golf Classic Update

Mike Ralph made a plea for registrations for the BBRC Charity Golf Classic on July 26. As of Friday's meeting, we needed more than 40 additional golfers.

Mike also recognized all of the sponsors.

Remember, no meeting this Friday, July 23, since the regular meeting will be after the golf tournament on Monday, July 26.

Click here to register online for the BBRC Golf Classic.

TOP

New Sergeant at Arms Struts Her Stuff

Elena Howell, our new Sergeant at Arms, collected $10 from Steve Goldfarb and John DeWater, who both missed her Sergeant at Arms committee meeting on Tuesday evening.

TOP

DaCdb Database Seminar

Chuck Kimbrough announced the District 5030 DaCdb — pronounced dack-dee-bee — seminar, to be held at Costco headquarters on Saturday, August 21, from 9:00 am to 10:30 am.

TOP

FRIDAY's PROGRAM

The Incumbent — Justice Richard B. Sanders — for Washington State Supreme Court

Justice Richard B. Sanders

Chuck Kimbrough introduced our speaker, Justice Richard B. Sanders, who is running for re-election to the Washington State Supreme Court. Justice Sanders originally won a special election in 1995 and was re-elected in 1998 and again in 2004. He was raised in Tacoma and attended University of Washington to earn both his Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and his law degree. He spent 26 years as a trial lawyer.

Justice Sanders had a couple of good Rotary stories to tell. His daughter Laura spent six weeks in Germany through the Rotary Youth Exchange and thoroughly enjoyed it. While on a family vacation in 1987 in Southwest Africa (Namibia), Justice Sanders drove for four hours on a solitary highway before reaching the campground. At the campground, the first person he encountered invited him to a Rotary meeting the next day. Rotary is everywhere!

Justice Sanders clearly has a sense of humor, as he told us a tongue-in-cheek story about the type of testimony he listens to:

Justice Sanders told us that he has heard 2,000 cases and written 570 published opinions. He thinks his most important job is to interpret and apply the Washington State Constitution and Declaration of Rights. He believes that governments are instituted to protect and maintain individual rights. The government controls the governed and it is imperative that members of government control themselves. The Constitution isn't self-executing; a separate judicial branch of government is necessary to enforce it.

Justice Sanders believes that Charlie Wiggins is running a very negative campaign against him. Given that we heard Charlie Wiggins' allegations against Justice Sanders two weeks ago, Justice Sanders left copies of a four-page document with us about "The False and Misleading Wiggins Accusations."

In response to questions from the members, Justice Sanders stated that he believes an election is a fair way to choose judges.

TOP