--- A Newsletter to Rotarians Interested in Matching Grants with The Rotary Foundation ---

June 11, 2008
Issue #2

PDG Philippe Lamoise I have received a lot of positive feedback on the first issue of this newsletter, so I will send out new issues and will try to keep a faster pace from now on. This way we can build a nice list of QuickTips, which are the main tutorials to learn how to use this site.


LA 2008 Convention Breakout Session at the LA Convention
For those of you attending the Los Angeles Convention, be aware that there will be a live demonstration of the Matching Grants Website at our breakout session on Monday June 16, 3:30 to 4:30 pm. This will be in room 511. We will go through the life cycle of a project with 2 computers, with DGSC Dan Gensler from District 5340, to simulate the host and the international partner. This will demonstrate most of the website features. Don't miss it! And if you are not going, let your friends from your district know about it if they are going to the Convention. See you all in LA!

Dropped Projects
The customized issues of the newsletter include a list of your projects at the bottom of the email, if you have any projects listed on the Matching Grants Website. The first issue included in the list some projects that had a status of "Dropped". This has confused a few people. I had included them for you to see the historical list of all your projects. A project would have a status of "Dropped" when it was not carried over from one Rotary year to the next, or when the host club tells me they no longer want to do the project. From now on, I will no longer list the "Dropped" projects in there, only the ones still looking for funding, or "Approved" or "Completed" in the past.

PDG Philippe Lamoise
2006-07, District 5340

QuickTip #3: Yearly Cycle

Previous Year All projects on the Matching Grants website are listed for a given Rotary year (July 1 to June 30). This is the year of approval for Approved projects, or the current year for projects still looking for funding. By default, the current year projects are listed in the main project list, but you can click on the "Prev Year" button to look at projects from previous years. The search feature also gives you the option to search for all the years, or for any given Rotary year.

After March 31 on any given year, since projects can no longer be sent to TRF for approval, projects still looking for funding have to be carried over to the next year if they want to stay listed on the website. Carry Over This is done by pushing the "Carry Over to 20xx-xx Rotary Year" button on the administration page of the project. Reminder emails with detailed instructions are sent to all project partners every 2 weeks from April 1 to August 1, and failure to take action by August 1 will cause the project to be dropped from the Matching Grants website.

All this is to make sure the list of projects on the website only contains current projects, and we have not lost contact with the project partners for any given project.

Once a project has been approved, it will stay listed on the website indefinitely.

QuickTip #4: Is this Website only to find Project Partners?

Application Form and Documents Repository No! This website is also very useful to:

  • Help you fill the paperwork online, and generate the application form to send to TRF.
  • Communicate by email between the project partners (the website takes care of the distribution list for you).
  • Keep track of the current status of the project through the history log entries.
  • Have a repository of project documents (application, announcement letter, agreement forms, reports, etc.) accessible by all project partners 24/7.
  • Have a testimony of your club's achievement through the project page that stays on indefinitely. Click here to see an example of a testimony page for my Rotary Club.

All these extra features can be discovered on your own, or will be described in details in future QuickTips.

I get from time to time requests to remove a project from the website after they have found their funding. Doing so would deprive you from all these other advantages. Think twice before you confirm the request to be removed.

Featured Project: D-893, Workshops for HIV/AIDS Patients in Brazil

D-893

HIV/AIDS Workshops

Brazil

$18,830

Approved

I am happy to report that the project featured in the first issue of this newsletter became very quickly Fully Funded, and has now been approved. The money is expected to arrive in the project account in a few weeks. You can check the project status by clicking on its title. We obviously keep this page well updated!

Recently Approved Projects

We had too many projects approved since the last issue of this newsletter, so I cannot display them all here. Instead, click here to see the list of projects Approved during the 2007-08 Rotary year. Currently, that's a total of 64 projects for a total budget of $1,701,393.

Rotary Matching Grants Website - www.MatchingGrants.org

Go to www.MatchingGrants.org/newsletters.html to consult the archived issues of this newsletter.