3 ways to refresh your signature project

3 ways to refresh your signature project

If your club’s service showcase is losing members’ interest, try these three ACE tools.

By Tony Knoderer

From playgrounds and parks to festivals and fundraisers, signature projects are what Kiwanis clubs are known for in their communities. In fact, Kiwanis International recognizes the best of them each year with the Signature Project Contest. 

But even the best signature projects can lose their impact. Maybe it’s just a matter of routine — a need to refresh what’s become too familiar for members. Or maybe it’s something more difficult to identify.

Your club’s signature project is its showcase to the community — so it’s important to make sure members care enough to make it impactful. If the project needs to regain member interest, some of Kiwanis International’s Achieving Club Excellence (ACE) tools can help: 

  • Evaluate your impact. Start with an accurate sense of the difference you’re making. With this tool, your club can make an honest and thorough assessment. 
  • Member survey. Sometimes you need to address a core issue: What makes the club experience valuable for members? Specific questions that explore their perceptions of the club’s impact — and what they’d like to start doing — provide insights that can be applied to your club’s most important project. 
  • Club vision. You can also take a look at the big picture: What does your club do, and why does it exist? This tool helps your club create a vision that guides leaders and members alike. And it includes instructions on conducting a group exercise, so everyone has a part in the process.

Don’t forget: All these resources can be found on the ACE tools webpage, which includes other common concerns clubs face — and pairs them with the tools that help address those issues.

Kids get gifts in wake of disaster 

Kids get gifts in wake of disaster 

A Florida, U.S., Kiwanis club’s annual holiday program was more urgent than ever in 2024. 

By Tony Knoderer

For 34 years, the Kiwanis Club of Plant City, Florida, U.S., has made sure that kids in need get gifts during the holidays. In partnership with local businesses and organizations, the “Christmas for an Angel” program collects wish lists from local children — and then coordinates Kiwanians and various community members to gather and distribute the gifts.

Sharon Moody, club member and event chair, says the program was especially important this year.

“A lot of families are still hurting from Hurricane Milton,” says Moody, who is also a past governor of the Florida District.

Hurricane Milton struck Florida in October, becoming the fifth-largest Atlantic Ocean hurricane in history. It reached wind speeds of 180 miles per hour and generated nearly 20 inches of rain.

“Some kids got displaced,” Moody says. “Some are still living in hotels. Ultimately it affected about 1,500 students.”

For parents and volunteers alike, the children’s smiles were especially touching when toys were delivered to kids in 18 elementary schools throughout the day on December 16.

The success of the event was particularly gratifying for everyone who pitched in to make it happen — barely two months after the natural disaster that made the need more urgent than ever.

For Moody, it was a reminder of the power of partnerships. For example, the club coordinated the project at the City Parks and Recreation Building in Plant City. Locally, Stingray Chevrolet and its employees were crucial, she says, as were members of the Rotary Club and Plant City High School Key Club.

Moody’s gratitude ultimately extended to a wide range of people and organizations in the area — from local churches and retailers to South Florida Baptist Hospital in Plant City.

“This year, everybody stepped up,” Moody says. “We got together, and we got it done.” 

Creating new literacy opportunities

Creating new literacy opportunities

A Montana Kiwanis club turns trash into reading treasure. 

By Julie Saetre

“Education and literacy” is one of the three Kiwanis causes, and the Silver Bow, Butte, Kiwanis Club in Montana, U.S., found a creative way to bring kids and books together — while helping the environment. 

It started when Kiwanis International Trustee Cathy Tutty, a member of the club, purchased a house that came with an unwanted leftover: an old, nonfunctioning refrigerator taking up valuable space in the garage. 

“I thought, ‘What can we do with it?’” says Tutty. “I didn’t want to just take it to the landfill.” 

Doug Ingraham, a fellow club member who works at an asbestos abatement business, volunteered to remove the refrigerator’s freon if a purpose could be found for the appliance. Tutty had an idea: Transform the refrigerator into a freestanding “book box” — and place it in her front yard. 

After the freon and the refrigerator’s seal were removed, club members painted the refrigerator in “Kiwanis blue.” Then Tutty visited the elementary school just two blocks from her home and asked the librarian whether any of the students would be willing to help personalize the former fridge.  

“There were four groups of them,” Tutty says. “We got some nontoxic paint, and they put all these different-colored handprints on it.” 

The school also happened to be getting a number of new books for the library and donated the older books to Tutty for the box. And when another refrigerator became available from a neighbor’s estate, she decided to create a second book box for a local affordable-housing apartment complex. 

Partnership power
At the time, the Montana District of Circle K International (the Kiwanis service program for college and university students) was in Butte, holding its annual Fall Rally. The CKI members took on fridge-painting duties as a service project. Now the box is available 24/7 outside the apartment complex office. 

“All of that got Doug thinking, ‘We’ve got to figure out a way to get books,’” Tutty says.  

At the time, Scholastic — a large publishing and education company — was awarding one “book desert” grant to each state in the U.S., with a goal of expanding children’s access to reading material. Ingraham applied and received the grant for Montana, gaining access to 1,000 books and an official Little Free Library. He placed that library halfway between a high school and an affordable-housing community. 

Tutty occasionally supplements the book supply with additional purchases from Scholastic. 

“Every so often, I’ll buy US$300 worth of books when they have a special going on,” she says, “because you get 20 free books for every $150 you spend. So then I end up with 40 more books.” 

As for the box in Tutty’s front yard, she also stocks it with fruit snacks and small bubble blowers in the summer and sports drinks when the weather is cool — adding incentives for kids to stop by and grab a book. 

“It’s fun,” she says. “People say, ‘You have a refrigerator in your yard?’” 

Has your club gotten creative when supporting education and literacy? Let us know! Email shareyourstory@kiwanis.org.