Ed Smith spoke with Nancy Ragues, the Executive Director of the Fairport Perinton Partnership and a member of the Fairport Rotary Club and Ron Roberts from the Fairport Rotary Club.
-Ron and Nancy explained why they why he joined Rotary
-Ron talked about the networking benefits of Rotary, locally, nationally and internationally
-They gave examples of some of the local projects they support like the Food Shelf, Learning Links in the Fairport School District, Books for the World and a water project in Africa.
-Ron described their upcoming Savor the Flavor event on March 3rd. This is their biggest annual fundraiser. Funds from this go to various charitable programs.
-They both encourage people to get involved and come experience one of their meetings. Each meeting provides a learning opportunity with different local organizations and non-profit come to their monthly meetings and do presentations. This allows them to learn about the organization. It is also part of the process they have in place when they decide to support a non-profit with financial or in kind services.
-They talked about trying to attract younger members, having meetings at different times and how they do have some younger members now.
-They explained how they try to leverage grants from Rotary International to support local projects that they fundraise for but this strategy gives them more money to complete the project.
-Nancy gave a brief history of the Fairport Perinton Partnership and explained what the organization does by networking and helping local businesses, nonprofits and government agencies collaborate.
-Nancy said they are always looking for volunteers to help with different events and projects but they now have a system of emailing people and explaining exactly what is needed as far as skill and time commitment.
-She talked about a new event they are doing in March, an Irish Festival. They are working with a local historian to provide some history on Irish immigrants building the canal and local businesses for food, dancing classes and more.