At the Podium Last Week: August 11, 2015

Last week we were honored to welcome new District Governor Tim Murphy and Assistant District Governor Jeff Wosje to our meeting, with President Mark Lauffenburger hosting. Chris Pierson gave our invocation, and included a heartfelt prayer to "call in all our markers for Charlie".  Jeff Wosje congratulated our club for publicly getting behind our police officers and the Night to Unite movement, then introduced DG Murphy, whose WRC visit was his amazing 22nd club visit in the six short weeks since his installation. 

 

DG Murphy acknowledged a number of important WRC accomplishments over the last year:

* our $9720 contribution to RI this past year, including 36 Paul Harris level contributors and 20 sustaining PH members

*our $56k dental project in the Domican Republic through the efforts of Chris Pierson, Arne Kjolbornsen, and Tom Vettel

*our joint "RotaryRotary" art installation project with the Orono and Plymouth club led by Heidi Nelson

*our 7th Annual Motorsports Car Show, and Marty Schneider's heroic efforts to make it happen each year

*our scholarships that are rewarding 16 outstanding students by helping them attend college this fall, and Bruce Lea's leadership 

*Fred Meyer's initiative to make Shelterbox a reality this past year

*Nate Lilleoden's tireless efforts towards our financial and tax records

*Steve Hance's hard work to make our Rotary Youth Exchange experiences seamless and welcoming

*Tom Vettel's tenacity to bring Rotary to new generations with the initiation of a new Rotaract chapter

 

DG Murphy spoke about Rotary's need to support and strengthen clubs. While globally we gained 100k members in last year, we also lost 100k members. He asserted that we have a retention problem rather than an attraction problem, and is working hard to apply business principals to build vibrant Rotary Clubs. Vibrant clubs attract new members and retain them. He challenged us to attract new members, get them quickly engaged and then engage them again and again, empower them, and get out of their way so they can make a difference. 

 

His second focus is toward international efforts, where we already excel, with 3 Peace scholars coming from our area, our foundation giving among the very best in the world, and our exchange student and project leadership projects consistent and meaningful. Rotary's worldwide long held goal of total eradication in within reach, with only two countries reporting polio this past year, for a total of 28 cases worldwide. This compares to 1000 cases per day when Rotary began the PolioPlus program. DG Murphy's goal is to inspire us to deliver $1 per day per member to the international foundation this year.

 

Tim Murphy's third area of focus this year will be to recreate our public image toward a more modern Rotary look and feel, using more relevent channels. Toward this end we're asked to continue to increase our use of the new Rotary branding materials and social media. More relevent to existing members, we were challenged to "invert our org chart" to make our members the drivers of club, to make our members "crazy happy", and for existing members to give the gift of mentorship to a new member: to be a person of significance for another, to raise each other up.

 

In closing, our district governor echoed Rotary International's president "Ravi" Ravindran's words: "Our time has come. It will never come again. Be a Gift to the World."