President's Letter

 

Our club is the only one in District 5500 with a full-time staff member. In fact, we also have a part-timer, Stephanie, to assist Dorinna in the club’s operation. Without this assistance to the volunteers, our club’s capability to provide service would be drastically diminished. We are fortunate to have paid help, and we’re very fortunate to have so capable and dedicated an Executive Director.

 

Like any non-profit with staff, RCOT has tasks that have been assigned to the paid help, and tasks that the volunteers carry out. That division is established by the club leadership, by trial and error, and by years of experience in what works best. We could hire more staff to take more of the load off of volunteers; or, we could cut staff time to theoretically leave more money to put toward service. What are some of the considerations in achieving the right balance?

 

Obviously, money is a limiting factor. Yes, members could pay more, or even much more, in the way of dues and we could hire added staff. Those new workers would reduce the number of volunteer hours Rotarians have to provide, while achieving somewhat comparable results to the current system. But, it is practically impossible to imagine dues high enough that the majority of the volunteer hours put into, for example, the Tucson Classics Car Show, could be covered by employees. The show’s gross income wouldn’t be enough to hire even 5% of the time put in by generous members and their families, let alone leave anything to be distributed to our beneficiaries. There are just too many hours, donated by too many, to instead pay for.

 

So to have more dollars to give to worthy causes, let’s just get rid of our staff and rely on additional hours per week from our members to do what is now done by the club’s office, right? That would be terribly inefficient and counter-productive. Volunteer hours are sporadic – you can’t count on them on a scheduled basis like you can employee time. The demands of running our club don’t often permit a “we’ll get to it when someone has time” sort of approach.

 

Then there is the expertise our staff has and gains. What if our volunteers don’t have that knowledge? Or what if this month’s volunteer does, but next month’s doesn’t? We can’t train everyone to do every job.

 

Institutional knowledge is a concept based upon longevity and a consistent presence. That is scarcely achievable, despite best efforts to save everything to disk, with new volunteers cycling in and out on something as important, to name one example, as the weekly lunch guarantee to the Doubletree. The cost of inexperienced guesstimates in this one area is equal to the majority of the annual cost of our part-time staff member.

 

There are club needs that cannot be, or would poorly be, handled by an employee compared to a volunteer. Asking for donations and enticing member prospects are examples of tasks better accomplished by members rather than staff. Taking volunteer hours to do staff work is a mistake if we then have inadequate member time to deal with matters that absolutely demand a Rotarian.

 

So when should a club member ask the staff for help as opposed to asking a fellow member? There’s no list covering all instances, but there are some guidelines. If staff can easily access background or data, don’t use volunteer time to do the research. If a job can be managed by an inexperienced or quickly-trained volunteer, save staff time for other work. Strategic decisions of significant impact are clearly an RCOT leadership duty. The secret is to leverage our volunteer time with the right amount of paid support.

 

A final thought on greater reliance on paid staff by raising dues is to consider the loss of satisfaction that comes with hiring a job done instead of doing it yourself. A great deal of the appeal of Rotary goes beyond accomplishing service to the world. The joy that is realized from knowing that good came about via your time, your ideas, your muscle, and/or your contribution to a team is of incalculable value. On top of that, add the amazing relationships you enjoy from striving for progress hand-in-hand with another dedicated volunteer.

 

There are things you just can’t buy.