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Fellow Rotarians,

As you know, the Rotary Foundation, as a response to the prevailing financial situation, has substantially reduced the humanitarian grants budget for the current Rotary year, and whatever funds were available for grants have been exhausted.

Consequently, The Rotary Foundation will not process any further grant applications this Rotary year. Similarly, the District is unable to process any further applications this year.

District Grants chair, D'Arcy Warner will contact sponsors of grant applications which have been returned by The Rotary Foundation due to a lack of funding, to discuss various options available to the sponsoring club.

Should your club have a project or grant application that was not funded during the current Rotary year, and you wish to proceed with the project during the 2010-2011 Rotary year using Foundation funds, your club must file a new grant application. Neither The Rotary Foundation nor the District is able to carry applications forward from one Rotary year to the next.

As indicated in my previous message, District 5040 is a pilot district under The Rotary Foundation Future Vision Plan, the provisions of which take effect July 1, 2010. District leadership is actively working to develop a set of guidelines and policies relating to both District Grants and Global Grants, and these will be disseminated widely once finalised. There will also be several learning opportunities for Rotarians to become familiar with the new grant model well prior to the start of the 2010-2011 Rotary year.

Without doubt, the current financial situation and its impact on Rotary's ability to "Do Good in the World" is disappointing, particularly to sponsors of grant applications which could not be funded. However, I strongly believe that the financial situation will improve over the next few years, affording us the opportunity to once again fund a greater number of projects and humanitarian activity.