Fingers in the Dike

Seven years ago, I faced considerable opposition and denigration locally for daring to initiate a campaign to start a new club; a response that I know has been meted out to fellow club instigators across Australia and other parts of the Western world. To be fair, I did also receive some incredible support, but my name is still mud in the eyes of some local Rotarians. I wanted to build a different club which focused on impact and volunteering instead of meetings, and I feel very grateful for everyone who played a part in the journey to create and grow the Rotary Club of Seaford. Ours is a club that has been recognised globally as an example of innovation and vibrancy. We’ve just celebrated our fifth birthday.

It’s always nice to be ahead of the curve. It's not a place Rotary beauracracy tends to occupy. Since our success at Seaford, I’ve been calling for more leadership and direction from RI on the need for new and innovative club models, and it would appear the penny has finally dropped. As a follower of numerous Rotary bloggers and influencers, I am starting to see increasing online content about “new style clubs”; content which is starting to reach and inspire a growing audience of Rotarians who are unhappy with the status quo. I genuinely feel that right now we are witnessing the swelling of a wave that could genuinely turn around Rotary’s membership fortunes in the West if enough people are bold enough to ride it. I cannot deny the sense of vindication as one of the many Rotary mavericks around the world who played a role in starting this movement given the opposition from some quarters along the way.

This blog is aimed squarely at the crop of district governors elect who will soon be participating in the 2022 International Assembly to prepare for their role as District Governor 2022/2023 and their district committees. 

I am yet to meet a District Governor who isn’t interested in growing membership. I suspect I’ve attended more Rotary district training events in and outside of my own District 9510 (formerly 9520) than the vast majority of Rotarians, many as an invited speaker. If there's one phrase I can always count on hearing at such events, it's this one: "Membership is our top priority". I'd actually be concerned if I didn't hear it. I’ve been very lucky to have met an extensive list of amazing District Governors and Governors Elect, some of whom I would consider close friends. They have all been hard workers and well intentioned, but those who have actually overseen net growth over their term in office form an extremely small minority. 

So why, if district membership growth is apparently such a priority, is it so rare? I'll answer that question shortly, but here is one undeniable fact about those districts which have achieved it. They’ve done it by starting new clubs. So lend me your ears, district leaders in waiting. Here, in a nutshell, is what you need to do to have any hope of growing your membership. 

You need to start new, innovative clubs, and most importantly, you need to take district ownership over the process. I will guarantee that you will get a better return on this membership investment than any other initiative. There are people right under your nose in your community that would be great for Rotary, but they don't see a version of Rotary that would be great for them. So we can either kid ourselves, believing that existing membership challenged traditional clubs will suddenly work out a way to attract and retain them, or we can build new clubs that will offer a more attractive value proposition. 

There are numerous initiatives district leaders can implement to foster membership growth, at club and district level. I should know, because I've had a crack at all of them. We need to be delivering inspiring membership messages at district training events such as PETS, District Assembly, dedicated membership seminars and conferences, but we also need to be spending time with clubs which need help. We need to be sharing examples of best practice and innovation to stimulate club growth. We need to help clubs with recruitment and retention, and we need to train our members on building our public image and effective social media use.

But we also need to be conscious of the time constraints and work loads of our district leaders, and be mindful of directing our efforts where they can do the most good. I was constantly praised for my hard work as a district membership chair and was often complimented for inspiring so many Rotarians with my membership messages. Positive feedback is always nice, but the only thing that grew was my ego. The district numbers continued their downward trendline across my three-year tenure. 

It took me a while to work out where my strategies were failing. It wasn’t the message or the delivery method, but the lack of willingness for clubs to wholeheartedly support change. This clearly was not unique to D9520. Over the last 5 or 6 years I've had literally hundreds of one-on-one conversations with Rotarians all over the world about their membership challenged clubs. They often come about after someone has seen me present at a conference or on a video or Zoom meeting, or read my book. The same story gets relayed over and over again. They like the ideas and concepts I've conveyed, but they struggle enormously getting them implemented.

This is not the first time I’ve made this statement, and it won’t be the last. Our global membership challenges are well understood and we have the answers. I’m not suggesting I personally have all the answers, but the answers are known. Our inability to turn around our membership fortunes is not due to a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will.

For those who haven’t heard it, let me share the number one reason that the Rotary Club of Seaford was born, or more to the point, why I personally instigated the process. I was frustrated with the lack of tangible results from my efforts as a district membership chair. I knew the ideas I shared (not all my own, many were borrowed from successful clubs elsewhere) would work if only they could be implemented. So, when the opportunity arose, I went for it. With the help of a small group of hard-working colleagues and the initial interest group, we got the club off the ground, and it has been a huge success. Why? Because we do things differently. You wouldn’t believe how many times I have heard comments from other clubs (not always to my face) that the things we do at Seaford wouldn’t work in their club. The reason these things won’t work in other clubs is pretty simple really; it’s because they would never try them.

So, I’ve been off on a tangent for a while, and now I’ll come back to the circumference. Why am I so bullish on the prospects of growth through new clubs? Because the advantages of starting a new club with a blank slate are simply enormous. Sensible, flexible, contemporary, proven club innovations routinely rejected by traditional Rotary are readily adopted by those who aren’t cast from the traditional Rotary mould. District leaders have historically invested heavily in futile attempts to modernise faltering clubs, and have left the investment in new clubs in the “too hard” basket. 

Of course we cannot ignore clubs that need (and ask for) our help, but from a return-on-investment perspective, the evidence suggests that new club formation is a smarter bet. I’d go as far as to say, it’s a no-brainer. In fact, I’ll go further than that, and make a bolder statement. The ONLY way we will ever GROW this organisation in the West is with new clubs. Every other membership initiative we invest in is at best holding our fingers in the dike. We are haemorrhaging members. Even if we do everything else really well, the best outcome we can possibly hope to achieve is to hold current numbers where they are. At best.

I’m not going to pretend that the process of getting Seaford off the ground was easy. It was the hardest undertaking of my Rotary journey. But we got there, and it is immensely satisfying; not just for the club’s members and the local community which has benefited from our work. It is also immensely satisfying to see how our club has inspired innovation elsewhere.  Of course, there are so many other great new examples of contemporary Rotary springing up about the place too.

I’ve talked a lot about return on investment, and this where I want incoming district leaders to pay particular attention. I’m not solely talking about the investment of time and effort, which of course are critical. Districts must budget for and finance new club startup initiatives if they are to be successful. For most of Rotary’s history, new clubs have been sponsored by existing clubs. I've no doubt this is still happening, and Satellite Club formation is playing an increasing role in growth. But it strikes me that these days, fewer and fewer clubs are in the position to sponsor new clubs. They have their own battles to fight, and finding new members for other clubs is often (justifiably) seen as a conflict of interest. It’s time for district leaders to take the bull by the horns.

Earlier this year I spoke at a training event interstate and gave a presentation called “The Case for New Clubs”. My parting challenge for that district is a challenge I lay down for all districts.

1. Establish a team tasked with investigating new club opportunities and partnering with local clubs and stakeholders to implement action plans.
2. Work to foster a growth mindset amongst all Rotarians in the district.
3. Fund new club startup costs.

Part 3 is especially important. If your district does not have a dedicated budget for new club start-ups, why not? I was very fortunate to get a $2,000 grant from our district public image budget to cover some startup costs at Seaford. Amongst other things, this paid for domain name registration and hosting for a website, flier printing and distribution, some advertising in a local paper and a catered information day. You cannot expect individual Rotarians and potential charter members to cough up for these expenses if you’re fair dinkum about starting new clubs. I know of examples right now where passionate Rotarians are trying to get new clubs off the ground. Some of these efforts are driven by district leaders. Some are not, but at least they enjoy good support at district level. But some get no support whatsoever, and in one example, a district governor stymied efforts. 

The growth we covet is possible, but we have to want it hard enough, and we have to work to achieve it. I've often heard commentary that we need our district governors to be leaders, not managers. Well, I can't think of a better way to lead. Stop talking the talk about membership growth, and start walking the walk.

In closing, I wish to share a wonderful short video from PRIP Mark Maloney on the importance of starting new clubs, even where existing clubs operate. I hope you take the time to watch it. 

Impact

By now my followers should be under no illusion about my position on our meeting-centric culture. I fully appreciate that Rotary’s name arose from the initial practice of rotating meeting venues, but it intrigues me that 116 years later, the meeting remains at the centre of the Rotary universe for the overwhelming majority of clubs, and seemingly a large majority of Rotarians. I suspect a major contributing factor was the historical practice of measuring the value of a Rotarian by measuring their attendance at meetings. I cannot imagine that this started in 1905, but it was most certainly still happening in 2005. It strikes me that when an organisation has a motto of “Service Above Self”, the best way to measure the success or worth of that organisation should never be by counting the number of meetings its members attend. We really should be measuring service, or the product of that service; impact.

If you’re new to the organisation (or not a member), you should find this bizarre. When I joined Rotary in 1997, there was an expectation that you attend regular club meetings. If you couldn’t attend a meeting, you were expected to do a “makeup”. The preferred way to attain a makeup was to attend the meeting of another club. For the record, I think it is a really good idea to visit other clubs, but not primarily for the reason of satisfying your club’s attendance officer. There were other makeup options, such as district events. I think a district conference or international convention was worth two makeups! As a backup plan, if you couldn’t attend another club meeting, you could participate in a service project. No, I’m not kidding. I distinctly remember a culture where the primary expectation of a Rotarian was not serving the community, but attending the next meeting. If you weren’t at almost every meeting; you weren’t a “good Rotarian”.  This culture still exists and I’ll prove it later. If you didn’t meet your attendance requirements, or if you missed a few consecutive meetings, you could expect a phone call from your club president. I remember our club attendance officer giving an attendance report every week, which had to be forwarded to district leaders. God knows what they did with them! Each year at our changeover, the outgoing president handed out 100% attendance certificates. I think I received at least six of them. The culture of attendance was prevalent in my Rotaract years too.

I don’t remember the exact year, but it was soon after my year as club president in 2006/07 that attitudes started changing. The concept of prioritising engagement over attendance started floating around in the late 2000s. I can distinctly remember then RI Director Stuart Heal proclaiming that “Makeup belongs in the bathroom” in a speech during his directorship sometime between 2010 and 2012. Soon after, attendance rules started to ease. District brass were no longer chasing club attendance records, and whilst makeups didn’t go directly to the bathroom, it has been quite some time since I’ve heard the term in Rotary circles. But I would stress that my last five years of Rotary membership have been in a non-meeting-centric club.

But Rotarians are Creatures of Habit, and old habits die hard. The culture of meeting veneration and importance placed on attendance was, and in many cases still is entrenched. Despite Council on Legislation (CoL) changes to meeting frequency rules and member attendance rules, the overwhelming majority of clubs are still meeting on a weekly basis, most with a high expectation of member attendance. For the longer serving members of the organisation, and I’m talking 30, 40, 50+ years in some cases, weekly attendance at a Rotary meeting is welded into the calendar. It’s not simply a component of their Rotary membership, but a routine part of their lives. I can completely understand why this is something that so many of our longer serving members would cherish, and it doesn’t really surprise me that the prospect of fiddling with meeting frequency would draw such a backlash. The prospect of fiddling with the plethora of seemingly indomitable rituals and practices that accompany said weekly meetings is similarly perilous.

We cannot simply see Service Above Self as a motto. It should be our raison d'être. The contribution Rotarians make to the world is enormous. We have so much to be proud of, but still so much more to do. And we can’t do it without members.

Over the last 25 years Rotary’s membership base in Australia has declined from 40,000 to 25,000 (37.5%). We certainly cannot blame population, which has grown from 18.3m to 25.7m over that period. In 1996, one in every 457 Australians was a Rotarian. Now it’s only one in every 1,028.

25,000 Rotarians cannot make the same impact as 40,000. I don’t have data on the average age of an Australian Rotarian in 1996, but it was surely much, much lower than the 71+ it is now. That would suggest the impact decline would be considerably higher than the 37.5% membership decline.

As the average Rotarian age has crept up, the average club membership has crept down. The number of clubs in Australia has been on a steady decline as well. As clubs face the perfect storm of ageing members and declining numbers, our output can only decline. I would suggest as the club's output (and therefore, impact) declines, so does that club’s relevance. And the vicious cycle begins: declining impact, declining relevance, declining recruitment, declining numbers, declining capacity, declining output, declining impact.

Make no mistake. Our number one priority as Rotarians, as clubs, as a global organisation should be impact. Of course, we should be enjoying ourselves. Of course, we should be growing as humans, building friendships, and getting something out of our contribution. If you ask any long-term Rotarian why they’ve been a member for so long, chances are they will tell you that they get so much out of their membership, but I will guarantee you that those who are getting so much out of Rotary are those that are putting so much into Rotary. They are making a contribution, and that contribution is making an impact. There is literally nothing in life that will give you a return before you make an investment. Whether it be a financial investment like property, or a business or the share market, or an investment in relationships, your education, or your health. Rotary is no different. For those prepared to roll their sleeves up and make a contribution, the returns will come. But for those who leave Rotary because they feel they’re not getting anything out of it, I would question how heavily they’ve invested and what sort of impact their efforts have made.

And guess what? Simply turning up to meetings is not investing in Rotary. I would suggest the clubs most at risk of handing in their charter are the clubs that are no longer making an impact. It may be the case that they’ve made an enormous impact in the past, but the impact tap has been turned off, and holding weekly meetings is pretty much all that can now be managed.

Does membership decline always precipitate impact decline? This is more a chicken-or-egg conundrum than you might think. I am convinced declining impact precipitates ageing and declining membership. You’re probably wondering, “How could declining impact make members age and numbers drop?”. It comes back to relevance. If a club is seen as relevant, it will attract new, younger members. But if a club is making little or no impact, it can be seen as irrelevant.

I was recently approached by a concerned Rotarian who was looking for some direction with regard to turning around the membership decline in his club. I asked a number of questions in an effort to get to the nub of the problem. It took a bit of poking and prodding, but it finally revealed itself when I asked what should have been a fairly simple question to answer.

Apart from meetings and barbecues, what does your club do?

The protracted response which included a few “umm”s and “ahh”s, but mainly silence told me a number of things. It didn’t just tell me that he didn’t have a good answer. It told me that the question genuinely caught him off guard, and his response, or non-response immediately identified the cause of the problem. This was a very meeting-centric club which was making very little, if any impact in its community. The meetings may well have been enjoyable and well attended, but the club was losing its relevance. He even went on to make some comments about a promising new recruit that could no longer attend regular meetings because of a job change, and therefore “had to leave”. I questioned if the club couldn’t find other ways for the member in question to make a contribution. That question evoked a similar response to the previous one, which cemented in my mind the position that, like so many other clubs, meeting attendance is seen as the essence and primary obligation of membership. The member in question may have had enormous energy and capacity to make a difference in the community, but because she couldn’t attend regular meetings, she was discarded.

If I’ve heard this story once, I must have heard it over a hundred times. Clubs somehow manage to attract young professionals with a humanitarian focus who initially flourish in an organisation which promises an enormous capacity for humanitarian outcomes, but eventually they lose interest (or are terminated) because they are unwilling or unable to commit to regular meetings. More often than not, those meetings are seen as an unproductive waste of their valuable time. They don’t add value to their busy lives.

I have attended more Rotary membership presentations than the average Rotarian, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been at a District Assembly or Presidents Elect Training Seminar where I’ve seen a checklist of meeting benchmarks that clubs should hold themselves to. The audience gets schooled on the importance professionally run meetings with an agenda, venue suitability, guest speaker appeal, food and beverage service standards, audio/visual equipment, etc. These are all important considerations, but I feel the most important question about meetings is never asked, and here it is:

Are your meetings an effective and productive use of your volunteers’ time?

This is another question that often draws a blank response. Prospective members might not verbalise it, but I can guarantee they’re thinking it. And I can guarantee most club leaders are not. Busy people do not have a lot of free time, so the time they give must be used productively and effectively.

I’ve easily attended well over 1,000 Rotary meetings in my time, and I would have to say I’ve enjoyed most of them. I probably sound like all I ever do is bash meetings, but I’m not suggesting they don’t have their place. I would like to believe the vast majority of Rotarians find their club meeting environment happy, comforting and informative. I’m not calling for that to stop, I’m simply calling for our organisation to become less obsessive about meeting culture and for Rotarians to spend more of their valuable spare time out in the community where we can best make an impact. And I’m also calling for more flexible clubs and membership options that are inclusive of and welcoming to the huge contingent of community minded volunteers amongst us who desperately want to make a difference, but don’t want their volunteering experience to be dominated by unproductive meetings. 

The bottom line? If you’re wondering where the future members of your club are, I would suggest you start offering something exceedingly more valuable than meetings; impact.