For the last two years, it has been my honor and privilege to serve as President of your Foundation. With 25 active Board members, two wonderful staff, but most importantly with your faith and support, we have had our best year ever. Through the execution of a focused strategy, and working closely with the Club’s Board of Directors, we have achieved a number of significant milestones in 2006, namely:
- Funded 28 grants for sports programs for less advantaged kids, totaling $355,000, which is the highest yearly total ever.
- Attained our $2 million goal, and presented our 2 millionth dollar grant to the Good Tidings Foundation.
- Made three grants to promising, needy young athletes to help them develop into the sports stars of tomorrow.
- Selected the 2006 Ohleyer Award recipient, Sam Finlayson
We accomplished our goals thanks to your generosity and participation in:
- Our Annual Campaign
- Our fall and spring “classic” charity golf tournaments and auctions.
- Our new “Post Up Challenge” basketball competition
- Our “historic” dinner with California historian Kevin Starr
- Our second annual “ultimate” wine dinner and auction at Lakeside.
- Our silent auction at the annual Tennis Banquet.
- Our annual Turkey Shoot.
Finally, we initiated our new Memorials program to complement our existing Planned Giving program.
We can all be proud that our Foundation has now funded $2 million in grants to sports programs which have benefited 50,000 kids all around the Bay Area. But while sports are the medium, it is really not about sports. It is about helping young athletes learn important lessons which will help them immeasurably both now and later in life. Among these are leadership, confidence, personal responsibility, working as part of a team, setting and achieving goals, competing hard while respecting opponents, and learning from experience how to be better next time. Through articles in The Olympian, we have given you many examples of how our Foundation helps build character through sports.
And we can do more. And we will, because next year will be even better.
One essential responsibility of a leader is to choose carefully his or her successor, insuring that the organization will continue to prosper. I am very pleased to tell you that Dennis Moriarty will be the new President of the Foundation for 2007. Dennis is of course no stranger to most Olympians. He has served the Club faithfully over many years in many capacities, and served on the OC Board from 1994 to 1996 and as our Club President in 1996. I am certain that Dennis will continue to grow the Foundation creatively while maintaining strong relationships with the Club’s members, Board and management. Other Foundation officers helping Dennis will be Mike Delagnes, Vice President, Tevis Martin, Treasurer, and Judith Lucius, Secretary. And I will stay on the Foundation Board for another year to help in the transition.
With Dennis’s leadership, and with our active Foundation Board, but most importantly with your continued faith and support, we will continue to help young athletes live not just the length of their lives, but the width of them as well.
John
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