We were very pleased to wel­come Kiwa­nis Inter­na­tion­al Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, Jeff Oat­ess as our spe­cial guest speak­er this evening.

Jeff pre­sent­ed us with an overview of Kiwa­nis as it cur­rent­ly deals with the pan­dem­ic. Past Inter­na­tion­al Pres­i­dent and our EOT sage, Jim Rochford, had the priv­i­lege to intro­duce Jeff to meet­ing par­tic­i­pants. He expressed his admi­ra­tion for Jef­f’s forth­right, hon­est approach.

Since March 16th, KI staff have essen­tial­ly worked from home and insti­tut­ed a vol­un­tary pay reduc­tion dur­ing this time. A mora­to­ri­um was put in place on unnec­es­sary trav­el, a new mem­ber fee waver was ini­ti­at­ed and the KI con­ven­tion was can­celled. The can­cel­la­tion was announced once penal­ties were waived sav­ing our mem­ber­ship from any finan­cial repercussions.

Elec­tions will take place on July 25th with the Board and Gov­er­nors to select the Board for 2020. Online train­ing for Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor and CLE train­ing has been vir­tu­al this year. Sim­i­lar­ly, most clubs have been meet­ing online and have found that it allows for a vari­ety of guest speak­ers, oth­er­wise unavail­able dur­ing an in-per­son meeting.

There are cur­rent­ly 37 inter­net clubs. We are pleased to report that we are now the num­ber one club in mem­ber­ship. An inter­net club aver­age mem­ber age is 54, rang­ing from 20 to 92 years. There are cur­rent­ly 10 Dis­tricts in the US that do not have an inter­net club. That pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ty for club growth.

What will post pan­dem­ic clubs look like? Will they be a com­bi­na­tion of in-per­son and online meet­ings? Only time will tell.

We thank Jeff for his insight­ful pre­sen­ta­tion and hope he has recov­ered from his fierce feline zoom encounter…