President Rocky called the meeting to order and led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Jim Blaney provided the Invocation.
Visiting Rotarians:  Marietta Osberg from Semiahmoo/White Rock and her daughter.
Guests of Rotarians:  Deb Wiggs
Returning Rotarians:  The Villhauers from a trip to Costa Rico and Panama.  Tim said this cruise was much better than his first one when the Spartan-like accommodations were provided by the US Navy.
Birthdays:  Jill Iwasaki was last week and Stan’s 93rd is coming up on the 16th, so his daughter surprised the club with a Birthday Cake over which we all sang (I think that’s what it was) Happy Birthday to Stanley.
Anniversaries:  Rollo
Announcements:  Board Meeting next Wednesday at 4pm at the offices of Metcalf Hodges.  Everyone is welcome.
Laurie announced that we’ve been contacted by the Ferndale Chamber about being the guest group for an event they are calling Business Unplugged.  It will be a casual networking event between a group (WCNR) chosen by the Chamber and the membership of the Chamber itself.  The first event is planned for Thursday April 9th (3 weeks from now) from 5-7pm.  The meeting would be held at the WECU meeting room (where Johnson’s restaurant used to be) and they would cater in hors d’oeuvres & drinks.
We also have an opportunity to be the program for a full Chamber luncheon meeting to give the full Rotary and WCNR story.   June and August meetings are available.  Meetings are the 3rd Wednesday of each month.  This would be a great opportunity for exposure of WCN to the business & community leaders of Ferndale so we can tell our story one-on-one.
April 10-11 is the Whatcom County Youth Fair and in the past our club has participated as judges of various competitions.  We’ll need 4-5 participants.
Bill announced that the Elks Lodge is having a fundraiser auction on April 18th and he’d love it if any club members could donate any auction items.
Dan announced a Litter Pick Up (he didn’t indicate whether it was cats or dogs) for March 28th.  A signup sheet to follow.
Tim provided Perfect Attendance Pins for Rollo and Marlene
 
Happy Bucks: Bill was happy his neighbor has planted 800 Walla Walla Sweet onions, Rollo was happy to go visit his daughter at college in Spokane.  Ken was happy about his daughter and daughter-in-laws visit and gave a heads up that the tulips will be in bloom next week in Skagit. Pete was happy about winning a $50 raffle item when he bought a ticket from a visiting Rotarian from La Conner. Stan was happy about the birthday for his youngest Grandson. Pati was happy about our new members.  Dan was still sad about the Super Bowl but his spirits improved with the recent trade for Jimmy Graham from the Saints. Rick was happy about the new members, Stan’s birthday and the upcoming Running O’ the Green this Saturday. Jake was happy about the ratio of frosting to cake on Stan’s Birthday Cake.
Fine Master Ken:  Rick was fined first for sending out an email message requesting membership input the same day of the meeting, poor planning.  Everyone who owns a motorcycle or convertible who has not used them in the last few days of nice weather had to pay at buck.  All retired folks who weren’t wearing shorts today had to pay.  If you’d never stayed for dinner after the meeting you had to cough up some dollars. If you had not brought a guest during this Rotary Year, you paid a buck.  Jake was fined for being so early today, probably due to the Daylight Savings change.  Dan for being the last one in today was fined.  Ken was happy to be the first to fine our new members Linda Quinn and Jill Iwasaki. Laurie was fined for not having Happy Bucks for the recovery of her misplaced computer.  Rocky was fined just for being related to Ken and Alina was fined for being AWOL from last week’s meeting.
Rocky introduced our Program, Rick Staeb to discuss membership.
He attended the District Membership seminar two weeks ago and brought back some of the ideas on increasing membership.  First we looked at our own club website that showed the number of members over the last two years, the age breakdown and the gender percentages.
1. We saw our significant drop in members when we made the move from BHam to Birch Bay and we knew that would happen.
2. Our lowest point of membership was in Oct/Nov at 24 members
3.  Now we are on the upswing and will keep climbing from here.
The decline in our membership is not unique to our club.  Membership in the other 4 clubs is flat or declining as well, as is the membership in most service organizations.  We are seeing a shift in our culture that has people interacting much differently than ever before.
If you look at the reasons you joined Rotary, perhaps for networking purposes, giving back to your community, your company wanted you to be part of Rotary or maybe you enjoyed the fellowship and wanted to learn more about your community.  Those are all valid reasons; however those needs or wants can be met or achieved in many different ways than what we did 30 years ago.
Networking today can be done thru Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. Giving back to your community can be done in many different ways as well.  The Internet enables you to give specifically to individual organizations locally, regionally or internationally.  When it comes to learning more about your community, the internet serves that need as well and does so instantaneously.
And when it comes to Companies encouraging their employees to join organizations, they’re actually discouraging them indirectly or sometimes directly buy not budgeting for those activities or requiring more work of senior employees who have less opportunity to go to Rotary Meetings.
One of the main things Rick came away from the membership meeting with was how we need to communicate especially with younger potential members and new members; Social Media.  This includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube.  At the meeting we were provided documents from on how to set up Facebook and Twitter accounts.  We looked at our WCN Facebook page to see how it looks.  Not bad, just not current.  We need consistent posts of interesting items.
Other Ideas for increasing membership:
Corporate membership, perhaps 3 people from a large organization who would share in the participation with the club.
A Member at Large, someone who loves what your club does but can’t commit to meetings but will be there at your big fund raisers or major events.
The Best Way is a personal invitation from a member to a person asking them to come to a meeting. Other option could be an invitation to a specific meeting with a follow up phone call from the President of the club.
What is our Whatcom County North elevator pitch to join our rotary club?  Is it exciting or does it sound like a bunch of stodgy older people with check books sitting around a table during a boring meeting.
Rotary is no different than any other product or service, as in order to attract new members Rotary must be "sold".  In the sales process there are many questions to be answered. Some of these might include:
  • What are the benefits to me?
  • Why did you (the proposer) join Rotary?
  • What are the costs?
  • How much time will it require?
  • What is expected of me?
  • What does Rotary do?
  • Why should I join Rotary?
  • Who are the members?
Frequently invite guests to come to a meeting.
Moving to the Ferndale Library will greatly improve our ability to recruit new members. But beyond having a meeting, it needs to be a fun gathering.  Something people don’t want to miss.
We collected names from members for the board to determine how we invite these people, i.e. corporate membership.  What stops us from asking people to join? How do we make it easy for people to join? How do we make it fun so people want to join?  Increasing membership is everyone’s responsibility.