There is a particular kind of Wednesday morning that only comes once a year for this club: the one right after Pies for Breakfast. The March 18 meeting had that feel throughout — a room full of people who had just pulled off something genuinely good and were ready to take stock of how it went. The news, as it turned out, was excellent.

Jessica walked the club through the full financial picture, and the headline is this: the event netted approximately $21,500 — a record. Sponsorships alone came in at $22,600, well beyond the $15,000 target the committee had set at the start of the year and a significant jump over last year’s $11,000. Attendance and chicken sales added roughly $3,600 more, with an additional $600 from the raffle. Meanwhile, expenses were sharply lower than in prior years. Pie costs dropped from $1,360 last year to just $600 this year, almost entirely because club members and community bakers showed up with homemade contributions. Weeks of gentle reminders — “We need the pies” — paid off in a very direct, measurable way. Coffee and drinks ran $200, and marketing and posters accounted for another $100. The bill that in past years came from purchasing disposable supplies simply didn’t exist this time around.

A meaningful share of the credit for the sponsorship surge went to Amanda Wenzel’s marketing effort. Members recalled that this year, for perhaps the first time, sponsors and guests arrived saying they had heard about the event on the radio, seen it on their phones, or caught it somewhere online. That kind of organic visibility is hard to manufacture, and it made a real difference in turnout and energy. Harriet deserves her own note here: she connected the club with a radio spot and appeared, apparently without fully realizing it, in video coverage as well. The result was exposure that reached people well outside the club’s usual orbit.

One gentle lesson for next year: coconut cream pie was not, it turned out, the crowd favorite of 2026. A few of those lingered. The committee will plan accordingly. The club also has some residual pie inventory from schools that will bring in a little more revenue, so the final total may tick upward slightly.

The meeting made space to recognize Becky, the unsung engine of the Pies for Breakfast kitchen operation. For the third year running, Becky arrived at 7:00 in the morning, organized and ran the kitchen, and stayed until the last door was locked — sweeping, cleaning, and handling every detail in between. The club is putting together a gardening thank-you basket for her, with a member generously donating both the basket and her time to assemble it.

On the sponsor side, the club has 60 handwritten thank-you cards to get out — one for each business that came through with a sponsorship. Feedback from last year’s sponsor visits made clear that these cards matter: people like receiving them, and they appreciate seeing the names of fellow members inside. The plan is to tackle 30 cards this week and the remaining 30 next week. Members were welcome to start signing during the meeting itself.

With Pies for Breakfast behind it, the club turns toward the spring stretch of the Rotary year. The energy in the room on March 18 was the particular satisfaction of a job done well — not just adequately, but better than it has ever been done before. The CSH Rotary Club meets again next Wednesday.