August is Membership and New Club Development month. Attracting and bringing in new members has never been a problem for Rotary. The problem for Rotary is RETENTION! As I said in my first meeting as President, 20 years ago there were 1.2 million Rotarians and today there are 1.2 million Rotarians. From 2006 - 2014 Rotary turned over 100% of it's membership. What do I mean from that statement? What I mean is that we brought in 1.2 million new members but at the same time lost 1.2 million members. RETENTION!

 

We need to invite and find people in our community that want to make a difference because we do need new people. We need people who will help us see things from a different perspective but we must also be relevant to the members we already have. We must have the programs that our members are interested in so that we can RETAIN membership and have growth. Last year we dropped about 10 members and the year before we gained about 10 members. See a trend here? 

 

Our goal must be to have programs and projects that are relevant to our members so that we have a reason to stay in Rotary. Through these programs and projects we can attract new members who want take part in what we are doing. Your mission for the remainder of this month is to seek out people you know who you think would be a good Rotarian and invite them and look at yourself and figure out what your passion is. If we are not working on a project or program that is your passion, talk to the appropriate Avenue of Service Director and see if there isn't a project we could become involved in. This is your club and we should be working on projects that are relevant to our membership.

 

We have the Sheriff-Elect, Bill Ayub speaking to our club this week. This will be the first opportunity to hear from our new Sheriff and next week we will be hearing from another new member to our club Christina Ahn.

 

 

Yours in Rotary Service,

Jeff Hata

President, 2018-2019

Rotary Club of Ventura-East