DDF or the District Designated Fund is the money that the District gets back from Rotary International Foundation.

This amounts to 50% of the contributions sent in by the District three years before, under the Share Scheme. So, for example, if District 1080 collected £80,000 in the year 2006/7, we would get £40,000 back in 2009/10.

Districts can have 1/5th of that, i.e. 20%, as District Simplified Grant, which our District always has done. We then get a cheque for, in this case, £8,000 to help make grants to clubs for local or international projects in which clubs in the District are involved .

The rest of the £40,000 i.e. £32,000 can be spent on either-Educational Programmes - Sponsoring an Ambassadorial Scholar, or having an extra GSE Team. or Humanitarian Programmes which cover Matching Grants, Polio Plus donations, Specific Disaster Relief Donations ( such as Tsunami relief or the Pakistan Earthquake ) and supporting “Poor Countries” Funds.

The 50% retained by RI goes towards funding a Group Study Exchange each year, matching the District and Club amounts on Matching Grants, Matching other projects the District gets involved in( currently Polio Plus ), Peace Scholars and some other minor items.

Each year the District sends out a Questionnaire to each club asking them how they would like the DDF spent in 3 years time. We ask , what % you want in Humanitarian or Educational. We then average out the answers and allocate accordingly.

The more clubs that reply, the more democratic the allocation can be. So please send in your club’s return and don’t leave it to the Foundation Committee to choose as clubs have suggested in the past. Examples of spend are overleaf