TRAVERSE CITY, MI: A major gift from Rotary Charities Of Traverse City has added $35,000 to the building fund campaign at Michigan Community Blood Centers Main Donor Center at 2575 Aero Park Drive.

Dick Ford, chairman of Rotary Charities of Traverse City, announced on June 13 the names of 17 organizations receiving grants in the Charities’ spring 2006 grant cycle. Together, these program and capital grants total $515,000. At Michigan Community Blood Centers Traverse City location, the Rotary grant will help pay for building additions and improvements that will expand the donor area and create specially equipped space for staging mobile blood drives and storing supplies. The expansion was prompted by growth in operations and in demand for services during Michigan Community Blood Centers first 10 years of service to communities in Northwest Michigan. Compared to 1995, when the Traverse City center opened, the number of mobile blood drives conducted annually has more than doubled, as has the volume of blood collected each year.

Since its inception in 1977, Rotary Charities of Traverse City has given away more than $33 million to support various projects that enhance family and community culture, environment, education, recreation, affordable housing, and health. The charity program began with a stroke of good luck when valuable oil and gas reserves were discovered on land owned by the Traverse City Rotary Club and used for years as a Boy Scout camp. Rotary Charities of Traverse City was created as a public foundation to distribute interest income from oil and gas royalties in the form of charitable grants to organizations in a five-county region of Northwest Michigan.

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