Founded in 1984, The Golden K Kiwanis Club has been improving the community of Columbus through fundraising events for organizations, youth-oriented services, as well as Riley Hospital for Children. Composed of retirees from the Columbus area, they are dedicated to improving the world one child at a time.
Leading the club is Basil Fritsch, who has proudly served as the club’s president for two years. Fritsch notes that he is grateful to serve in the position for such an amazing group of people.
“I think I was proud of the fact that I was president for two years. Our’s is a very small club, there are only 11 members, but they are just dynamic. Anything that we try to do is successful and it’s been a pleasure to more or less run the club,” he says. “It’s a wonderful thing when you have people that are so complementary.”
For many of their larger fundraising events, The Golden K Kiwanis Club partners with the other two Kiwanis clubs that are in Columbus.
“The situation is that it’s a collaboration of three clubs. You know, it’s kind of an international thing. They have clubs in 89 countries, and we have 3 clubs here in Columbus, but anyway, most of the things that we do, many of the big things that we do, are in cooperation of all three clubs,” says Fritsch.
“Last April we had a pancake breakfast at North High School that was fairly successful, and we had the Run for Riley. We had a 5K run and that generated almost $9,000, I think, as a donation to Riley Hospital, but those are the things that all the groups participate in together.”
Individually, each group still holds their own smaller events for fundraising. One type of event that the Golden K Kiwanis club holds are Dine and Donate fundraising events at different restaurants.
“You know, we contact different restaurants in Columbus, and they will give us a fee back for the amount of money that we would spend there on a particular night, but we can use that money then to donate to the various charities that we have. A big, long list, like Salvation Army, Love Chappel, Riley Hospital, Hospice, Just Friends, just anything you can think of are things that we donate to during the year with any money that we get or even with the programs that we have.”
The club tries to stay connected with the community and its needs through its meetings. Every month, they have someone from the community come in and speak about different things that are going on in the community that the club might be interested in supporting.
“We’ve had quite a few members or quite a few people come to our club to talk about needs and different things. We had the former Vice President of the United States (Mike Pence) and the former sixth district congressman (Greg Pence) speak to us. We’ve had the Mayor Mary Ferdon speak to us. We had the head of the field house speak to us; we had the firemen speak to us.”
If you’re interested in joining The Golden K Kiwanis Club, they meet on Mondays at 10 a.m. at the Mill Race Center in Columbus. “Just walk into the meeting and introduce themselves. We’ll talk about joining,” says Fritsch.
