Over the last 6 months, I’ve received so much great feedback from our district on the topic of Membership. More than anything else, we’ve heard that clubs want more help in structuring flexible membership options that can be rolled out without undue complexity. There are organizations all over the world providing the opportunity to give back. If we’re going to maintain and grow our membership base in our clubs, we need to find a way to open our doors to a wider group of service-oriented individuals. In order to do this in a way that maintains the option to continue with a traditional membership, we are working on a “membership menu” from which clubs can pick and choose which membership types they’d like to offer. There will be no requirement that a club uses these offerings, so if the decision of your leadership team is that the existing membership structure won’t benefit from having additional flexibility – that’s your club’s decision to make. For those clubs who do find a benefit from adding on additional membership offerings, there will be a team of folks who are trained on how to roll them out. We currently have multiple clubs who will soon go into a pilot phase to test the models and provide feedback before rolling out to the district in the new year. If you would like to be a part of this pilot please send me a note.Second, we have rolled out a new process for leads that come from Rotary International to our district. Every month we receive on average 4-5 new membership leads from individuals who log onto Rotary.org and click “Join Rotary”. In the month of August alone we’ve already received 7 new leads that have been sent by our team to the prospective member’s local club president, membership chair, and assistant governor. If you’re club receives one of these leads it’s an opportunity to connect with not only the prospective member but their friends, family and colleagues! For more information on this process send me a note and I’ll be happy to explain further.
I want to thank you all for your terrific feedback and hard work as we move through this Rotary year. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me anytime.