What does the Crofton Rotary Do?  See this article from the October issue of The Business Monthly!

Crofton Rotary: Tradition in the Making


Perhaps too humbly, Crofton Rotary President Ed White is the first to admit that his club is still seeking to establish a name for itself. However, that seems to downplay all of the contributions that it already has made and is making to the community - many of them in a short amount of time.

White, who took over in July, already has a large slate of projects ahead of him. One of the main projects, he said, is CREST, the Crofton Rotary Elementary School Project. Through this project, he said, the club looks at local elementary schools and determines what it can do that wouldn't otherwise be done. Last year, White said, they renovated teachers' lounges. "The school board was never going to," he said.

The CREST project is also a good example of how Crofton Rotary focuses on getting the most out of its money. White said that the club spent $1,000 to get $5,000 worth of contributions at one point in the project, thanks in large part to the donations of local businesses.

In addition to the Dictionary Project, Crofton Rotary also hosted a back-to-school event where local businesses and schools sent representatives to inform students and parents before the school year. "Everybody was represented, and that was kind of cool," said White.

In addition to schools here, said White, Crofton Rotary also supported a $60,000 initiative to put computers in a school in Brazil.

White also said that his club is looking into adopting an orphanage overseas where the American dollar stretches further. He said, "Five hundred dollars in Gambia is multiplied by eight. That's cool."

Making his club's money count is a life-and-death issue. "There's 25,000 children that die a day in this world from poverty," White said.

Despite all of those projects, White said that his club isn't anywhere close to done. "We're still trying to have an influence," he said. "We're still trying to have a balance." Between local, national and international projects, White said that Crofton hopes to have significant focuses on all three.

White also stressed the importance of emergency preparedness. "I was a volunteer for Katrina," he said, "and I actually joined Rotary because of that."

As far as fundraising, White said that his club is still trying to establish more events and signature programs through which local businesses and individuals can help contribute to its many causes. He said that, right now, the main event is a formal winter gala that typically nets $8,000 to $10,000 in profit and is mostly distributed locally. The entire profit from the event goes to help the club's causes.

More so than anything else, White said that it was important to club members to help as much as possible in this manner - by making sure as much money as possible goes directly from a donator to a cause, magnified and multiplied as much as it possibly can be.

"It's important to me in Rotary that every dollar I give goes to charity," he said.