With a career that involved lots of driving the state, combined with a love of beer, Robin Shepherd became an effervescent expert on beers, especially those of the upper Midwest. Drawing on his penning a trio of books on the breweries and brewpub of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, as well as regular beer articles in Madison’s Isthmus, he regaled us with tales from his deep knowledge of the beer culture of our region. The 1980s saw the emergence of craft and home brewing, ending the total dominance of the big national brewers. This trend has continued to accelerate. Wisconsin is home to about 175 brewers now, with perhaps 500 in the Great Lakes region as a whole. All beer comes from just a combination of water, hops, barley, and yeast, but the different techniques and flavors added to make for a wide palette of flavors. Lagers, ales, pilsners, bocks, stouts, sours, tarts, lambics – the variety appears to be endless. Wisconsinites approve: they manage to consume thirty-three gallons per person.
This Week’s Speaker: Changing of the Guard – New Club Officers
At our May 3rd club meeting we had small group discussions to gain more qualitative insight on the club survey results. As indicated earlier, our club survey results were overall very positive. Based on lower scores or consistent themes in the written comments, there were 4 areas that we chose for discussion: members not inviting people to join our club, the types and amount of fundraising our club does, the lack of community service projects, and our club’s pace of change. Here are some themes from the survey and/or the small group discussions:
We have too many check writing “fundraisers”; we need another signature fundraiserlike the golf outing. When our club was formed, it was to be about service, not just writing checks.
We want a better understanding of how we spend our fundraising dollars. There is alsosome confusion about our club foundation and the Rotary Foundation.
We want more service projects; especially one that occurs on a monthly cadence and at night to meet the needs of people who can't get away during the day.
We don’t know how to ask people when inviting them to a club meeting; maybe a needfor training/materials
Next step...I would like to review our existing committees, have every member sign up for a committee and leverage some of our club meetings for committee meetings. I would like our committees to have goals they are working towards and all members engaged. Several of our committees are committees of 1 and for those, I’d like to get other people to join the committee. The thought process is that active committees will lead to more engaged club members, increased member retention and eventually more members joining our club. In the near future, I will get a sign-up sheet for all of our members to choose a committee. As for committee meetings, starting in July, I have asked our speaker committee to allow 1 meeting a month for committee meetings or other club topics we feel we need to have. The monthly cadence may change to quarterly or something else but we will figure that out as we go; we just need to start and we can adjust as we feel necessary. We will try some new ideas; some will be great and others may need to be modified. Please keep providing your ideas/input within the committees and provide feedback along the way. I am looking forward to seeing the progress we make in addressing the feedback from the club survey.
Deb Dieter, Kevin Moran and Matt Loch will be going through our storage room at Zor Shrine after the meeting on June 21. It is a large climate-controlled space that doesn’t cost additional money. We plan to inventory what’s there and I am sure that we have acquired a number of items that are no longer needed. If you have any Rotary club items at home, feel free to bring them to the club meeting. We’ll take them from you and free up valuable home storage space. Contact Matt with any questions.
Mary Van Hout spoke about this program at the last meeting and it created some buzz. Use your Amazon spending (and more) to help Rotary change the world. See further info in this screenshot. Use the URL on top to go to the original page. Thanks, Mary!
We are looking for ideas for service projects that we can participate in. If you have an organization you feel strongly about supporting and would like to explore an opportunity for a club service project, please contact Patrick Rees (patrick.rees@usbank.com ).
Our club will be bringing bingo back to the Middleton Good Neighbor Fest August 23-25, 2019. This is part of some throwback features including a Friday fish fry and Sunday chicken dinner. We will need volunteers for bingo sessions on Friday (evening), Saturday (afternoon & evening) and Sunday (afternoon). Mark your calendars now, because Wisconsin summers fill up quickly. We have a small committee formed including Deb Dieter, Jack Ferreri, Dawn Frank, Kevin Moran, Rod Nilles, and Matt Loch. We can use some more committee members and we are meeting this Friday after our club meeting. C’mon, join the fun!
Thank you to all who have volunteered for BINGO at Good Neighbor Fest so far. Here is a list of 20 places we still need to fill:
Saturday, August 24, 1-4 pm
Cashier (1)
Saturday, August 24, 6-9 pm
Bingo spinner (1) Treasurer (1)
Sunday, August 25, 10 am-1 p
Parade volunteers (2)
Sunday, August 25, 1-3 pm
Bingo caller (1)
Bingo spinner (1)
Treasurer (1)
Cashiers (4)
Sunday, August 25, 3-5 pm
Bingo caller (1)
Treasurer (1)
Cashiers (4)
Sunday, August 25, 6-8 pm
Grounds Crew (1)
Monday, August 26, 5-8 pm
Grounds Crew (1)
You can email debragdieter@gmail.com to reserve your spot.
DON’T BE ONE OF THOSE … ‘AW, SOMEONE ELSE WILL DO IT. BE THAT SOMEONE!
Final numbers aren’t in, but preliminaries look very promising. This was our major fundraiser, and members and their golfing buddies turned out to support it. Numbers and pics next Bulletin. Thanks to Kevin Welton and his crew for all their work.
Your intrepid Bulletin Editor and Cub Reporter Ferreri tagged along with the McAdow Miles team last Saturday. Great time pedaling together, although your editor was clearly the slacker. Jerry McAdow, Paul Patenaude, Peter Hoff, and Leo Edelstein (behind the camera) made the ride south and west from our start point at Pacific Cycle on Hammersley Road. Jerry shared some of his road wisdom with the slacker. Wonderful time, beautiful weather, and 12 miles on the road. Great fun!
An inbound Rotary Friendship Team from Australia will be visiting the Madison area in late July. We are co-hosting this with Madison Downtown Rotary. We’ll need accommodations for five couples and two singles. Hosts will pick up the 1 or 2 people at the agreed-upon place on Monday, July 22, provide overnight accommodations and breakfast, and transportation to the daily activities. Many hosts trade off days and attend the daily events with the guests if possible or drop them off with the group in the am, meet them for dinner, etc.
