Membership Corner - April 11, 2016
Membership Corner: Acton-Boxborough – An example of an excellent membership effort!
By Tom Sturiale
Diana Nestorova, the dynamic leader of the Rotary Club of Acton-Boxborough, shares the story of her club’s successful membership efforts during the past year. It is clear that a clearly thought-out, one-step-at-a-time approach will yield excellent results. Here in Diana’s own words is her story:
"Over the course of my Rotary year as a president, we identified the classifications that we needed in order to make our Acton-Boxborough Rotary family a complete entity: a teacher, a medical practitioner, an engineer, and local broadcast company. We accomplished it all on March 30, when we inducted four new members and one corporate member (with two associate members). How it all started:
"February 23 was the 111th anniversary of Rotary International. We wanted to commemorate it with a special event and we had a Meet and Greet evening on February 24.The reviews from the evening:
"We had a lovely Meet and Greet at Le Lyonnais, the French restaurant of our own Joan Labrosse and her husband, Gerard Labrosse, who opened their beautiful restaurant and provided savory cheeses, crackers, fine wine, soft drinks, coffee and dessert. The food was exquisitely presented and we all had a jolly-good time!
"It is always a fun event to thank the supporters and friends of Rotary and to meet new people from our community. Everybody had a good time socializing and meeting our guests and our members in a non-formal setting. We had 14 guests.
"At that evening, we introduced Rotary along with its history, objectives and values. Our guests were informed what we do as a club and heard our members' history with Rotary and the variety of ways to participate. We talked about club service, vocational service, community service, international service, and youth service
"After the evening, our guests agreed unanimously on the pleasant time we all had: the captivating explanation of the Rotary history and its 111th anniversary on February 23; the Four-Way Test; Avenues of Service of Rotary; and our club's many different projects and functions. We all made sure to manifest the beauty of Rotary with its boundless opportunities!
"After that Rotary evening, we followed up with our guests in the hope to attract the "Rotary breathing" potential members. And we did! The president and the Membership chair met personally with some of the attendees and, on March 30, we inducted four new members and our very first corporate member - Acton TV - with one principal and two associate members. District Governor Jim Fusco honored us by attending and inducting the new members. It made them feel very special. In the closing of the induction meeting on March 30, I included my personal feelings on why we need Rotary members:
"When a tree stops growing, it is ready to die. A Rotary club is like that – it is moving ahead only when it is growing. Rotary’s greatest strength will always be the individual Rotarian. No other organization has such powerful human resources offering their skills, talents and hard work to make a difference in our community and the world. We found seven of them and now we have to engage them. It is our promise that we will make our new members an essential part of the ever-so-powerful family tree of Rotary."
Thanks Diana. It is a wonderful story. Are there any other clubs who would like to share their membership-effort stories?
Closing thoughts
We need to keep experimenting with our meeting agendas to maintain members’ interests and to encourage attendance. Meetings need to be fresh, exciting and interesting. This will also assist your club’s Membership Committee chair and members in attracting new members to the team. Please let me know of your ideas, comments and stories about Membership you would like to share. E-mail me at tsturiale36@gmail.com.
March articles
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