Bud pushes membership

Our guest speaker was Bud Sukhu, a Past President of the Heart Lake Rotary Club and also represents our District as Membership Co-ordinator.  Bud is responsible for eight clubs in our district, Brampton, Brampton South, Flower City, Bramalea, Heart Lake, Milton, Georgetown, and Acton.  In this role, Bud's initiative is to raise awareness of what is happening with Rotary International, with a focus on membership issues.

The biggest issue service clubs are facing is membership retention.  Rotary is not alone with this challenge.  Worldwide, 51,000 members leave for various reasons, while only 44,000 new members join (these numbers are reflecting Rotary International membership).  A Rotary International North American Planning Team has been created to address this challenge.

Our district's goal is to increase each club's net membership by 4 Rotarians annually.  In this regard, the district has adopted a three year focus on attraction, retention and new clubs.  New club operating styles are being adopted which allow for more flexibility, including Associate Memberships, Corporate Memberships, Satellite Clubs and eclubs.

Some of the important statistics; 14% leave for uncontrollable reasons, (health/personal reasons or death) and 86% of members leave for controllable reasons.  For this reason, there will be a focus on quality prospects rather than quantity and a survey is being created for clubs to use to measure the pulse of their membership and adapt as an exit survey.