DISTRICT DIRECTOR’S REPORT

DISTRICT DIRECTOR’S REPORT – May 2007

CHARITY GRANT AWARDED TO DISTRICT 23

I was going to report on the happenings at the various committee meetings I attended during the St. Louis nationals, but I was just informed that our District is a recipient of an ACBL $20,000 charity grant for the year 2007. Following are the details.

Beginning in 2005, the Charity Foundation of the ACBL decided to award individual charity grants to the Districts. This replaced the annual $100,000 grant for the Charity of the Year. This sum can be divided into no more than five separate grants, each of which must be made to a qualified 501©)(3) organization. Requests for checks will be made by me as our District Director. Requests for grant allocations must be made by November 15^th.

What I would like to do with these grants are as follows. I will divide this grant into five $4,000 grants. One will be awarded to our Scholarship Foundation. With the remaining four, I would like each of our Units to submit suggestions for local charities in their area. If two or more Units want to team up, that would be great. I then want to arrange for a presentation to the selected charities with appropriate publicity for Bridge in the media, most likely a local newspaper. The press release and hopefully a picture can discuss the ACBL Charity program as well as what we do on a local level. We could also include information about bridge in the community including bridge clubs and lessons.

Any Unit interested in participating in this program, please submit your proposal to me. I think this would be a great opportunity to promote Bridge in our District.

It’s a Different View From Dummy

Two items for this month. First, Graphic Design Contest. Each year ACBL has the Ace of Clubs contest and the Mini-McKenney contest. ACBL issues certificates for the Unit winners. There are no certificates available for District winners. I would like to present certificates for District accomplishment. Therefore, I an sponsoring a contest for someone to design a certificate that we can present to our District leaders. I am also working on a prize for the winner. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Second, is the 2007 ACBL District-Wide Elections. The positions of 1^st Alternate District Director and 2^nd Alternate District Director are up for election this year in our District. Anyone interested in running for either of these positions, must make sure their declaration of candidacy is received by the ACBL Director of Elections no later than 5 PM Central Time on May 31. Reference page 24 of the April Bridge Bulletin for further details.