Past-President, Tim Nissen will be running this week’s meeting. Tim joined Rotary on September 1, 1993, and served as Club President in 2007-08.

As we are near the end of the 106th year of Salem Rotary, I am proud to announce that our club has successfully met 11 out of the 14 goals I established and the board approved at the beginning of the 2025-26 Rotary year.

The eleven goals successfully accomplished were as follows:

Service Participation: Our Club members filled over 200 volunteer opportunities as we accomplished 14 Hands-On projects during the year.

Annual Fund contributions: Our Club members donated over $16,250, which exceeded our goal of $14,000.

PolioPlus Fund contributions: Our Club members donated over $1,775, which exceeded our goal of $1,450.

Social activities: our Club held 13 social activities, which exceeded our goal of 12.

Service projects: our Club completed 14 service projects, which exceeded our goal of 12.

Online presence: We have a current website.

Update website and social media: We updated our website more than the goal of 12 times during the year.

Inbound Youth Exchange students: We achieved our goal of hosting one inbound exchange student

RYLA participation: We sponsored three young adults to the 2025 edition of RYLA and our goal was two.

Outbound Youth Exchange students: Our goal was one outbound exchange student, and that is what we accomplished.

Media stories about club projects: Our goal was three publications about Club projects. We have written articles for publication about our literacy grants, our “large” grants, and our “small” grants, and all three have been published.

The three goals we have not met are:

Club Membership: the goal was 140 members, but we currently stand at 130. Last May when we set the membership goal of 140 we thought we would lose 15 members who would not renew their dues and we would be down from 145 to 130 to start the 2025-26 year. However, we lost 28 members and started 2025-26 at 117. So, although we will not achieve the goal of 140, we have gained 13 new members. I expect we will lose a few as we head into 2026-27, but that is the current unknown.

Strategic Plan update: This was not done, but we did establish clear and attainable current year goals.

New Member Sponsorship: Our goal was that 10 members would sponsor new members. Although we have inducted 13 new members, we have only had 7 different members involved in the sponsor role of those new members. We are finding that more new members are coming into the club without a true sponsor. They are just simply coming for the sake of Rotary.

In summary, I am grateful for the enthusiasm of all Club members. We have made great strides in our Hands-On project fulfillment, our membership gains have been good, our social activities have sparked to life, the annual community investment using our Foundation continues to be significant, and we are getting the word out to local media publications to tell the community about the good works of Salem Rotary.

As I finish my time away from Oregon, our adventures in the Norwegian fjords involve daily hikes of 2-6 miles. We will also travel through the world’s longest road tunnel – 15.2 miles – and enjoy a train ride on the world-famous Flam Railway which climbs 2,800 feet in just 12 miles while navigating 20 tunnels. I know we will have stories to share and memories to hold on to.

See you next week when we transfer leadership responsibility to next year’s Club officers and directors.

See you in three weeks.

President Doug Parham
Rotary Club of Salem
2025-2026