PDG Grahame Jones & PDG Noel Trevaskis
Can we increase our membership by 20% in District 9710?
RI President DK Lee has given all Rotarians a challenge to 
increase the membership of their Clubs, and District Governor Phil has taken up the challenge, he wants all Clubs in 9710 to increase their membership by 20%, I believe it is achievable to do this. If you look at your Club with fifty members that means ten extra members over the next twelve months or if you have twenty members it is a gain of four members, numbers don’t sound as daunting as the percentage increase does.
All Rotarians need to talk about the good programmes of Rotary and find out what the potential Rotarian is interested in, if it is youth tell them about our great Youth Programmes and how they benefit young people. Maybe the idea of serving overseas on a RAWCS programme to the north of Australia would encourage them to join, or if they have a medical interest, Interplast, ROMAC or the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund. Of course the programme that we are all proud is PolioPlus which has saved so many children from the debilitating disease Polio. There are so many humanitarian programmes of Rotary; people will have some interest in one of the great programmes of Rotary we need to talk about our Rotary programmes to all potential Rotarians.
What can you do? You can be committed to the goal of increasing membership and doing something positive about it. How do you get started? Firstly your Club President has to be committed to increasing membership and the whole Club has to be committed and involved. Do you have an effective recruitment programme in place and if not you need to adopt an effective programme for your Club.
The Club should do a Club assessment of itself: is your Club an attractive Club? Do you have good programmes? Are all Members involved in the Club programmes? Are your meetings well run? These questions and others can be answered by doing a Club assessment or using the Club Health Check programme.
Rotary Clubs should not be the same as they were five, ten or twenty years ago and should not be the same Club in five, ten or twenty year’s time, Clubs should forever be changing as change is progress! Too often Clubs have been living in the past and relying on the same people to bring members into the Club, we need everyone to be involved in recruitment and retention of members.
If every Club was to form their Clubs into teams of two members and each team of two given the task of bringing in one new member into their Club over the next twelve months, imagine what we could achieve?
With 1,500 Rotarians in district 9710, we would have 750 teams of two, if every team of two were to bring in one new member each year we would easily achieve the goal that RI President DK Lee and DG Phil has set before us. It is achievable.
The BEYOND 2000 recruitment and retention is a programme that does work and works on the principle of the “power of two”, it has been used successfully by a number of Clubs, one of the committee joint Chairs or a committee member is willing to speak to your Club.
The BEYOND 2000 programme is a programme that can help Clubs achieve their membership goals, check it out on the membership website: www.membership.rotary.org.au
