Part II - Supporting The Rotary Foundation Should Help Clubs Retain Members. Does It?

Please considering reviewing Part I of this two-part series.

When funding Global Grants, The Rotary Foundation's (TRF) policy is to match District Designated Funds (DDF) contributions $1 for $1 and cash contributions $.50 for $1.  That's fair.  But let's say a club would like to partner with an International district to fund a $40,000 Global Grant.  The club is in a district whose TRF committee has the following requirements for clubs to use DDF so they could obtain a $1 for $1 match from TRF: 

1. Clubs must contribute $100 per capita to The Rotary Foundation's Annual Fund (AF) just to be eligible to apply to use DDF, and
2. Clubs must contribute to the AF an additional $1 for each $1 DDF it wishes to use for Global or Local Grants.

For simplification in this example, in each scenario the International District partner will use its DDF for its portion of the proposed $40,000 grant.  Here are two scenarios the club should consider:

In the second scenario, the local club would save $7,250 by-passing contributing to the AF or attempting to use DDF during the Grant's funding year!  Upon further analysis, in districts where TRF committees operate with comparable requirements, clubs with 48 or fewer members may find applying to use DDF beneficial, but larger clubs would clearly be better off not doing so.   

Shouldn't all TRF and district policies be examined from clubs' points of view as well as TRF's and the district's?  For example, the local district in the sample scenarios requires that only clubs contributing $100 or more per capita to the AF are even eligible to apply to use DDF.  The district probably intended this to be an incentive to encourage clubs to meet the goal of $100 Every Rotarian Every Year (EREY).  Is it possible that clubs, particularly those who have annually contributed to the AF but do not meet this requirement, would view it as an attempt to force an increase in contributions to the AF? As not being fair to them?  As being a penalty for not meeting a per capita goal set by the district, an RI creation; an RI associate that exists to serve RI's member clubs?