August 1 was the deadline for District Rotary clubs to submit their Rotary Foundation District Grant Application online for this Rotary year.  We have a whopping 104 grant applications on the MatchingGrants.org website for a total of $627,092 in project funding.  This takes into account the club's cash donation and the district's match in District Designated Funds (DDF) of up to $4,000 per club.  District Governor Marta Knight has "upped the ante" on District Grants and announced in March at the District Grants Seminar that she would match any club's cash donation up to $4,000.  
 
Where did the DDF come from?  Three years ago, District Rotarians generously gave to The Rotary Foundation (TRF) Annual Fund and half of those donations are returned to the District to match District Grants for great projects in our communities and in international communities as well.  We also set aside 50% of our DDF to match our Global Grants, which are for international projects and are much larger in size.   We will talk about our GREAT global grants in next week's TRF Spotlight in NewsBits