Our Presidents Speak - February 21, 2017
Steve Kirk, Rotary Club of Concord
Please tell us what factors helped you decide to join Rotary.
I joined to get ideas for a future business I might want to engage in after retirement. I stayed to do social-action projects - service - as Rotary is so effective at doing them. I also made a lot of new friends.
Of your club’s activities, what do you consider the one thing that best identifies what your club is all about?
Our bi-monthly meal program at Bristol Lodge Soup Kitchen in Waltham, where we supply, cook, and serve hot meals to those in need.
What is your club doing this year to attract new members?
Membership mixers and social events with club literature available, and follow-up with prospective members, by our club members. We also have built a “club friends” e-mail list to include with our newsletter and event e-mailings.
Do you have any advice to offer others in our district about how best to achieve a successful fundraiser?
Make sure the cause you are supporting is clearly identified as the recipients of the net proceeds of the event. Ideally, the recipient of the funds should be a worthy cause with local community or international recognition.
Do you have any innovative plans for Rotary-related publicity during your presidency?
Exploit e-mail marketing and become more proficient at social-media marketing. We already have an excellent ongoing PR program directed by our PR Committee chair, June Grace. She is always creating new ways to supplement it. We have also created a Technology Committee consisting of club members with computer and marketing backgrounds. Their goal is to implement the technology and train club members on the latest technical resources available to do marketing communications and PR.
As president, what’s your biggest concern for this Rotary year?
Making the time to focus on growing membership, as we always have so many other things going on. Good things, but they eat up a lot of club resources.
What’s the best book you’ve read in the past three years?
Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography.
What’s your favorite quotation?
“He who is not being busy being born is busy dying” - Bob Dylan
What’s your favorite restaurant in your community?
Fern’s Country Store in Carlisle.
What one thing would you most recommend as a “must see," a “hidden treasure,” for visitors to your community?
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord - especially, this year. Henry David Thoreau is buried there, and this is the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Steve Kirk, president of the Rotary Club of Concord, may be reached at steve@esicomputing.com.
To learn more about Concord Rotary, click here.
