(from 'Beyond Borders' the Zone 24 & 32 Newsletter - July 2018 - by Bob Wallace Rotary Coordinator Zone 24 East)
One of the clubs in our area of eastern Canada has a situation that most of us don’t have but it certainly will come up more often these days.
The club started out as an after-hours club in a downtown area. The members are all energetic and want to make a difference in their community. They are all young, a great mixture of men and women, the perfect group of people we want and need as Rotarians. Thing were going great for this club until something started to happen that doesn’t occur in many of our Rotary Clubs. These young Rotarians who are just starting out in their careers decide that it is time to get married. In some cases, they married other members of the Rotary Club. This brought new people into the club and raised the awareness of what Rotarians do and they continued to meet at a pub after work for a few drinks and to conduct their Rotary meeting. The next thing that happened was these couples started having children and this is where the issues cropped up. How do they continue to meet after work when there were children involved who needed to be picked up from day care or other places? This made it difficult for the parents to continue Rotary membership and if they were married to another Rotarian the club was potentially losing two members. What to do?First the club understood their issue and decided to try some new ideas. One idea was to be sure that children were welcomed at the meeting. Some clubs find this difficult but the energy the children bring is more than worth it.
Second be flexible with the meeting time or events. Parents were encouraged to bring their children to the meetings and one or two parents watched the children while the meeting went on. As the children got a little older they realized Rotary was fun for them and began to ask their parents when they could go to Rotary again.
Some clubs have attempted to bridge the gap with less-frequent meetings or lower dues. Many others have worked to make Rotary more appealing to tot-toting families. Those family-friendly clubs have reported success in gaining new members and keeping those they might otherwise have lost.
Rotarians with children will feel less self-conscious if they remember that they’re not the only parents in the room. Some children have been long time visitors to club meetings. Make them welcome with a name tag and let them even contribute “happy dollars” when they want to have something to share.
In other words, make Rotary part of the weekly routine. As the children grow let them take part in projects and fund raisers. I know my own two children have helped out and it is easy to think of them becoming Rotarians later in life.