The following is from ‘For the purpose of doing good in the world’ by Susan Hanf, Rotary International News, June 6, 2012. “Arch C. Klumph is best known as the father of The Rotary Foundation. Klumph was born in the small town of Conneautville, Pennsylvania on June 6, 1869. When he was a child, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he would later become a member of the Rotary Club of Cleveland. In 1914, he was elected a director of the International Association of Rotary Clubs and served on the Constitution and By-laws Committee and the Executive Committee. He was elected Rotary’s sixth president in 1916, five years after he became a Rotarian.

Near the end of his term as president at the 1917 international convention in Atlanta, Georgia, Klumph defined six points of action, including an endowment, which would later become The Rotary Foundation. ‘Carrying on, as we are, a miscellaneous community service, it seems eminently proper that we should accept endowments for the purpose of doing good in the world, in charitable, educational or other avenues of community progress, or such funds could be well used for extension work.’

Through Klumph’s simple yet profound statement, the Rotary Endowment Fund was born. The first contribution was made by the Rotary Club of Kansas City in 1917. By 1928, when the RI Bylaws were amended to change the name to The Rotary Foundation, the endowment fund had grown to over $5,000.”