Our 2017 Installation Banquet where I was being pinned as Vocational Service Director by then-President Jemelia Davis.
It goes without saying that in Rotary membership matters.
As Rotarians, we are united as members of a common cause to serve humanity through our skill, our will, and our treasure. Rotary, is a wonderful global movement that allows us as individuals to take action, large or small, that are expressions of a collective will to make this world a better place.
However, Rotary has a problem. Membership.
Membership matters and Rotary’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The perennial issue of membership growth or, more accurately put, the lack of growth, seems like a never-ending and unsolvable problem. Year after year clubs seem to struggle with the following and other questions around membership:
- How to re-engage current and former members?
- How do we retain our current members?
- How do we transition more Rotaractors into Rotary?
- How do we recruit new members?
My club, the Rotary Club of St. Andrew in Jamaica, is no exception as we too struggle with these questions year after year. The great news is, that just like Rotary globally we have not given up. We continue to find and try new and not so new solutions to strengthen membership to allow us to continue to come together as a collective and better serve humanity.
The Rotary Club of St. Andrew has a storied history and I am proud to be a member. We were chartered in 1966 four years after Jamaica’s independence from Britain as the third Rotary Club in Jamaica. The Rotary Club of St. Andrew has a pioneering spirit as demonstrated by us being the first club to allow women to join Rotary in Jamaica. Even with this strong history and maybe because of it, we have not been spared from the challenges of membership growth. But we know that membership matters and have charted a course to address the issue head-on.
So what is the solution to Rotary’s membership woes?
I will not be so bold as to say that I believe we have found the solution, however, I do believe that we may have found a solution to the issue of membership. And the funny thing is it was staring us in the face the whole time. The 4 Way test, namely ‘building goodwill and better friendships.’
Membership matters and the best way to grow membership, in my opinion, is to, you got it - by ‘building goodwill and better friendships.’
The club is carrying out five initiatives in August 2019, August being Membership and New Club Development Month. These initiatives are being spearheaded by the club’s Director of Club Administration and the Membership Chair. We hope that they will re-engage, retain, and recruit our past, present, and future members:
- Member call - This is not new but it has proven in the past to be quite effective in getting the numbers out to meetings, events, and projects. It is a simple act, a phone call but it goes a long way in saying you are appreciated.
- A games night - a fun-filled night of fellowship, relaxation, and networking.
- A membership mixer - Yet another fun-filled night of fellowship, relaxation, and networking for the Rotary Club of St. Andrew. The mixer was about building and maintaining corporate relationships. The club has engaged a major financial institution in Jamaica to sponsor the membership mixer that is geared towards allowing prospective members to interact with existing Rotarians outside of our mid-day meeting time on Tuesdays.
- The Membership Challenge - Membership is a challenge, why not make into a challenge. Each club member is challenged to invite a guest to the club to participate in meetings and our service projects. Members will earn additional points if that guest is inducted, or if the guest represents an unrepresented vocation in the club or if the guest is a young professional between the ages of 25-45.
- Tell your story - Why am I a Rotarian? - We know that what moves people are Stories, not stats, attract people to Rotary and as such this initiative creates an avenue for members to tell their Rotary story. By sharing their journey members will be able to better understand, appreciate and learn from each other’s experiences.
Through these and other efforts we will build goodwill and better friendships proving that membership matters.