By ARIADNE WILL
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Sitka Rotary Club is taking its August peanut butter fundraiser up a notch.
The Peanut Butter Challenge is asking Rotary clubs around the state - as well as clubs in Tacoma, Washington, and Kruse Way, Oregon - to collect as much peanut butter as they can this month to be donated to local food banks. But the challenge also invites other clubs to participate in side bets.
Sitka’s club is working to raise more peanut butter per club member than Kenai’s club, led by Scott Seitz.
“If we win, (Scott) has to dance to the 17 seconds that are work appropriate of the RuPaul song ‘Peanut Butter,’” explained Sitka Rotary Club President Catherine Rogers.
Rogers said that as of Aug. 17, the Sitka club had raised 928.05 pounds of peanut butter - 27.29 pounds per member. This includes money donated, as Rogers said the club calculates one pound of peanut butter for every $2.50 donated.
Sitkans interested in donating peanut butter should contact the club’s treasurer by posting to Sitka Rotary Club’s Peanut Butter Challenge Facebook group, by email at jweitkamp@aol.com, or by calling (818) 207-2988.
“We’re crushing it,” Rogers said. “I anticipate a run on peanut butter in southcentral Alaska because I know Scott does not want to have to do anything with that song.”
Catherine Rogers, Sitka Rotary Club president, left, and John Weitkamp, club treasurer, show some of the peanut butter collected by Rotarians. (Photo provided to the Sentinel)
In an interview with the Sentinel, Seitz said that Kenai stores are not yet out of peanut butter, but that his wife has been blocked from name brands on Amazon.
“Now she’s had to do off brands,” he said. “They think she’s reselling it.”
But Seitz said the fundraiser is about more than the side bets he’s accepted.
“I like peanut butter, and I understand that peanut butter is important to the food bank, because kids out of school or after school who don’t have adult supervision for cooking can always make a peanut butter sandwich,” he said.
Seitz said he wanted to do the challenge in August because it’s a time when school is still out.
“One of my directors thought it was a good time before the school year started,” he said. “This is a time when there are no after-school meals or before school meals or free lunches.”
And he says he’s willing to get competitive with side bets, if that’s what will make people eager to get involved.
“That’s what Rotary is really about – sitting in the background, trying to think of fun things to do together to make our community and the world better,” he said.
