Annapolis Rotary Awards Over $24,000

By Michaila Shahan

Earlier this month, the Annapolis Rotary club announced the distribution of $14,500 to seven community organizations and $10,000 of grants to local high-school students with notable achievement in academics and community service.

The Rotary Club of Annapolis is the “largest and most active service club in Maryland’s state capital” claims their website. The club is composed of business, civic and professional leaders dedicated to fundraising and awarding funds to local charitable organizations that will better the community.

Service work is integral to the Rotarians’ mission. Like volunteering to clean up trash between College Creek and Weems Creek, offering college scholarships to local high school students, and hosting large events, like its annual crab feast, which raised $35,000 last year despite pivoting to a drive-thru model. The in-person feast returns this August to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

Through the efforts of members, the club has been able to support seven Annapolis-area organizations this year. The organizations selected for the grant money are the Banneker-Douglass Museum, Chesapeake Children’s Museum, Children’s Theatre of Annapolis, the Foundation for Community Betterment, Kunta Kinte Celebrations, Live Water Foundation, and Sail Beyond Cancer.

The Foundation for Community Betterment has held a chapter in Annapolis for seven years. Their mission is about helping individuals with “immediate and tangible needs” through fundraising events. Part of a national organization, it boasts around 100 volunteers in total, 20 of which help out in the Annapolis area. With funding, the foundation is able to recognize individual people in the community who have needs but cannot afford to meet them.

“We’ve helped over 400 recipients over 20 years—over $1.8 million in 20 years has gone out,” says Daryl Cooke of Arnold, the foundation’s manager. Recipients, Cooke explains, are people who are “down on their luck.”

“We’re helping out a family right now whose 5-year-old daughter has a brain tumor. We’re paying for a month of mortgage so they can focus on radiation treatment,” said Cooke.

Cooke says she is “hoping we can get the word out that we’re here” so that members of the foundation can better identify individual needs in the community. The grant money, she adds, “will help us work with other organizations to identify needs. (It) will help us reach more recipients and continue the ripple effect of goodness in our community.”