The Rotary Minute is a quick one-minute story that features the work and impact of Rotary in our community and world!
For today’s Rotary Minute, I thought it was appropriate to share a great example of your RCS dollars at work. Especially given today’s speaker. In early April of 2020, when the pandemic was creating huge havoc in all of our lives, then club President Paul Viren created a club task force to help find ways that our Rotary Club could help make a difference in our community.
One of the requests that came our way, via connections with Chad Dashiell of our Disabilities Committee, was from several nurses at Sacred Heart Medical Center who had a simple request – we need more coffee! Thomas Hammer Coffee, which has a store in the hospital had been forced to close their store. And, to make matters worse, the coffee provider that supplies the hospital Keurig cups was determined to be non-essential and not allowed to deliver, so the hospital simply ran out of coffee. All of the floors had a Keurig machine, but no coffee.
Chad Dashiell contacted me about this request since I was in charge of the RCS Committees at the time and he asked me how we could help these nurses. I reached out to my friend Barb, who works at Thomas Hammer, and she put me in touch with the right people at her company to get the ball moving on getting coffee to the nurses and staff.
The Disability Committee donated $2,000, Chad’s company, State Bank Northwest donated $1,000, and a local church donated another $1,000. And Thomas Hammer sold us the coffee pods at his wholesale cost, which was significantly cheaper than buying it from Costco, which we had originally considered and had priced.
We coordinated with fellow Rotarian Colleen Fox, who works at Providence Healthcare Foundation, and she put us in touch with the right people at the hospital to get the coffee delivered. And on April 23, 2020, we delivered $4,000 worth of coffee to some very tired but very appreciative hospital staff at Sacred Heart Medical Center.
Giving a jolt of java to those tired healthcare workers on the front line during the pandemic is an example of your RCS dollars at work! And that is today’s Rotary Minute!
