Rotarians, your District Membership Team wants to thank you all for your efforts to Grow Rotary this year. At this point we show a positive growth, which is great, but we must be ever vigilant in our efforts until the end of this Rotary year. Some clubs “purge” their rolls before the end of the year so we must continue to look for new Rotarians and keep the Rotarians we have.
According to reports generated by Rotary International we have gained about 250 new members but we have lost 241 members. Clubs need to find out why these folks are leaving and examine your club to determine if changes need to be made that will benefit your club.
As we look toward Rotary Year 2023-2024, the most important thing clubs need to do is Have a Plan. Have a plan for Growing Rotary through Growing Rotarians. It’s one thing to set a goal, but if we don’t have a plan to reach that goal it will be hard to be successful. The plan must contain a strategy for finding new Rotarians. We need to be more proactive in finding new Rotarians. We also need a plan for retaining our current Rotarians. Based on the numbers above, if we could retain just half of those we have lost we would have a phenomenal year in growth. Remember Retention = Growth.
So how can we attempt to implement our plan and achieve our goal. Rotary research confirms the single most important factor in membership satisfaction is the club experience. Club experience matters the most. Without that your members will not be engaged, will not see the club as relevant and will not be committed to the ideals of Rotary. We can plan all the projects we want, we can encourage continued support of The Rotary Foundation and we can strive to let our community know the good we do, but if Rotarians are not committed to make this work then it will be hard to be successful in these three avenues. This commitment comes from a great club experience. Please examine your club to determine if your club experience allows members to feel welcome, feel connected, have fun and form valuable relationships through Rotary that will allow you to have the best year possible.
This will be the last Monthly Membership Moment this year, but we will continue with these next year. Your membership team hopes these articles have been entertaining, informative, motivational and have helped you with your membership goals. We know that we will finish out the year strong and have an even better upcoming year.
Thank you all for all you do for Rotary and helping us reach our goal of Growing Rotary through Growing Rotarians.
District 5870 Membership Committee
PDG Jim Henry, Chair and members PDG Dian Edwards, Kent Bohls, Jeff Coleman, Rod Henry, Jason Duckworth, Jim Dardnne and our newest member DGND Todd Smith