Next Meeting - Tuesday, August 6, 2019, on the Mezz at Festival Foods, at 11:30 AM as usual.

This will be our business meeting for August, and there should be a couple items to discuss. Someone will Stuff A Bus somewhere (the Madison Monona Lioness, on August 10 at the Hy Vee on East Washington Avenue), and we have been invited to sort whatever was collected, on Friday morning, August 16, when sorting and filling up boxes will be done from 9 AM to 11 AM, same location as previous years behind La Follette high school and Sennett middle school. Hy-Vee and a representative from the Madison school district will be there. Apparently the Madison Monona Lioness Club came through, and we should help them.

An issue still remains unresolved - we usually conduct a Raffle fundraiser, but at the moment there is no venue or activity in sight where tickets might be sold. In addition, there seems to be a perennial problem with tickets taken by members and then returned unsold at the last moment. Increases the odds on winning, of course, but necessary revenue is lost as a result. The whole idea seems to need work.

Recently there has been another problem - lack of a quorum at Board meetings. Presumably that would be 6 Lions. We need another Director who will commit to being at the meetings, or else we need to reduce the size of the Board to 9, in which case 5 attendees would be enough. This is not the type of problem we need, obviously.

At the last meeting District Governor Conrad Dreyer gave a very nice informal presentation. The District served over 375,000 people last year, which is about 150 people per Lion member. There were over 100 diabetes events, which put us 1st in the State. Conrad reminded us that we (the District) raised $178,000 (more than the $100,000 required, meaning that we can purchase TWO flow-cytometers for cancer research for children.

Lions serve at all levels. The Inman, KS club raised nearly $10,000 for a member of their community who had enormous medical expenses. Our Club has planted trees, collected used eyeglasses, provided glasses for children in need, and supported all kinds of State, National and International projects. Some are grand scale fundraisers, some meet specific needs. We support Lions Camp at Rosholt, providing the camping experience to some who would not otherwise have it. We support the Lions International Foundation, which does everything from a new fire truck for tornado-ravaged Barneveld, to providing emergency housing trailers to earthquake victims in Turkey. So, make sure you are at the meetings to be part of these and many other efforts. You should be proud to be a Lion! Even if you're not there in person, your hand is on a lot of shoulders!

Calendar for August:
• August 6 - Business meeting
• August 7 - Zone meeting
• August 10 - Stuff the Bus
• August 10 - Save Sight Night at the Mallards
• August 13 - District Governor's Golf Outing
• August 20 - Program meeting
• August 21 - McFarland Food Cart Frenzy
• August 27 - Board meeting