George Farrow introduced our guest speakers Brian Bennet and Brian Carmichael who are very active Rotarians that have worked on membership development in our district and beyond.
Brian Bennet is Rotary club Woodstock club, member ship chair, has been involved in service clubs since he was a 15 and longtime rotary member.
Brian Carmichael is previous governor, membership chairman and a force behind passport clubs.
Presentation topic: Membership and Membership Development
The presentation started with a short and interesting video that asks the question of how to grow membership. There are a lot of people out there interested in service clubs such as Rotary but they are having challenges. For example, the meeting schedule is not suitable or the location is not convenient.
Increasing the number of clubs in a region and have them spread across different locations enables more members to join. Meetings of this clubs need to beset different times from each other to expands outreach. There is need to spread the word and adapt to changes taking place in the population at large.
The speakers went through actions suggested and reviewed tools that can be used to help our district increase membership positively. Actually, district 7080 is on a decline even though our club has an increase with several new and active members joining over that last year.
Retention is also an issue with many members leaving of variety of reasons many of them unknown. To meet many of the challenge’s rotary has become more flexible over the years and parties interested in becoming members have options with different types of clubs such as:
- Traditional Clubs
- Rotaract
- Passport clubs
- Satellite clubs
- Corporate Clubs
- Cause-based Clubs
- Alumni Based club
As more of these options become available within a district, activity will increase attracting more people across the board. Connecting with the community and listening to membership will always be strong pillars of the rotary club. Over all it was interesting presentation with many takeaways that will be of benefit to us.
Gary Comeford thanked the speaker with a nice reflection of how joined as young professional encouraged to become part of service club by his boss.
Further comments
- George V reminded us as of that Friday masks mast be worn in indoor public places and suggested that we consider making a mask with a rotary logo
- Rod suggested that over 3 weeks committees to meet up before next meeting
