The Rotary Foundation

The Rotary Foundation is the charitable trust fund of Rotary International. It is Rotary’s charity and it belongs to every Rotarian throughout the world.

The objective of the Rotary Foundation is to achieve world understanding and peace through international humanitarian and educational programmes. These are wide in scope. Although the idea of an endowment was discussed by Rotarians as long ago as 1917, it was in 1928 that Rotary International approved the establishment of what is now known as The Rotary Foundation, which operates under the supervision of 13 trustees.

All Rotarians are asked to contribute to The Rotary Foundation. The sums collected are considerable, amounting to many millions of pounds annually, and are fully used in funding the various projects carried out by the Foundation.

In 1980, in celebration of Rotary’s 75th anniversary, the 3-H programme was set up. This has brought many Rotarians into a new sphere of major projects concerning problems of health, hunger and humanity. Major immunisation programmes in the Philippines and a huge project to alleviate hunger in Ethiopia came out of 3-H.

The success of the 3-H immunisation projects led to the idea of controlling polio throughout the world by 2005. This evolved as PolioPlus, Rotary’s programme to help rid the world of polio and five other contagious childhood diseases. Vast funds were raised for PolioPlus and these are now being used on major projects aimed at meeting Rotary’s objective.

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