Mike Davis, the District membership chairperson, from the Eufala Rotary Club, spoke recently at the District Midyear Conference. The following is a summary of his message. Mike's insight can help your club improve and maintain a healthy membership drive.

Membership can be a tough nut to crack. Our district statistics indicate we are on a decline this year. Some of that is factual and some is due to inaccurate or late reporting by club secretaries to the district secretary. One big thing you can do to help your cause is to make sure that rotary.org is up to date on gains and losses by the before the Semi-Annual Report is produced. Make sure it is already correct when it comes out for review and make sure your reports into the District Secretary are timely and accurate.

It seems to me there are two parts to the membership puzzle, recruiting new members and maintaining current members. While they can be interconnected, let's look at them individually.

Recruiting new members is always a challenge. In Eufaula, we have all the regular service clubs.. Rotary, Kiwanas, Lions, and so forth. We compete with each of these clubs for our members and there are just not that many new potential members moving into our town on a regular basis. Your town may be dynamic and full of prospects but in Eufaula, we need to be proactive in pursuing those members. Our church recently got a new pastor, the VP for Alabama Power just changed and there's a recently elected new judge. These are all potential candidates for our Rotary Club and I know our club is pursuing them vigorously.

So what does your club look like?  Old. Male. Inflexible. Elitist. Exclusive. Secretive. These are a few of the responses that non-Rotarians consistently gave in recent Rotary International focus groups when asked what they think of when they hear the words Rotary International or Rotary club. The participants were professional women ages 30 and above and men ages 30-45. They had been prescreened by independent market research firms to include individuals who would satisfy the requirements for Rotary club membership.

The results show that while general impressions of Rotary are positive, there is an overwhelming lack of understanding about what Rotary is and what Rotarians do. Most individuals did not view themselves as potential Rotarians even though they maintained the professional requirements for membership. When I was first on the Board of Directors for our Eufaula club, we had very few ladies in our club. In the next few years we doubled our female membership and have two more about to join in the near future.  Countering the Old, Male, Inflexible, Elitist, Exclusive, and Secretive stereotype is a good first step in cracking the membership nut.

How do you find prospective members? As you well know, Rotary requires diversity in our club membership. One dood way to determine what your club makeup could be is to look in the local yellow pages. It's a quick way to determine the makeup of professions in your community and who some of the potential members might be. Unlike in the past, clubs can now establish their own classification system.

So, why do people join Rotary? I imagine there are as many reasons for joining Rotary as there are members in todays clubs. For me, I was in the Army about 30 years and never had the real opportunity to contribute to the local community. I wanted to 'give back' to my community and be a real part of it. Rotary was a good venue for that service. Through Rotary, I help kids in school, I help the local BSA troop, I help our college bound students financially with scholarships, and I get to help make our town a better place to live.

But I probably would not have been a Rotarian had I not been asked by one of our current members to consider joining. Some clubs require the potential member to approach them but we are not limited in that way. Another peripheral reason I joined Rotary was networking. I was new in town and had a finite number of acquaintances, found mostly in my golf group and our church. Through Rotary, I was able to meet a different group of people with a great knowledge base of professional resources in our community. It has helped me greatly.

Commitment to and interest in giving back to their communities through volunteerism was a common theme among participants of the focus groups. But what do you say to someone who says, "You don't need to join Rotary to help your community"? I answer them with the specific projects our club does that would be difficult for an individual to do by himself, such as the Polio Plus campaign, college scholarships for deserving seniors, the dictionary program, and sponsoring the Boy Scout troop. I'm sure your club has similar answers to this tough question.

Now, we've identified prospective members, figured out what motivates them to join, broken the elitist, male stereotype, asked them to join and now they have joined Rotary and are members just like you and I. What motivates them to stay members?

There are several pieces to this puzzle. First, I think the main reason Rotarians remain members is their expectations for their club membership are realized. In other words, the club's activities target the reason they joined the club in the first place. In my case, one of the primary reasons I joined was to give back to the community. Our club has projects that meet this need. Just a couple of weeks ago , we were distributing dictionaries to third graders in our county. I really enjoy meeting these young people and seeing how important that simple book is to them. When we are done with our presentation of the dictionaries, I always ask if there are any questions. This time, one young man raised his hand. He said, "I'm going to stay with a friend tonight, he has lots of dogs. And I will be there about 5 days. What happens if the dogs eat my dictionary?" He had probably just got the first book of his very own and already he was worried about not losing it! You could tell that book meant something to him. So, having club projects that target the reason members joined goes a long way to keeping its membership intact.

On the large scale, beating polio is an important issue to me. I'm old enough to have had friends growing up who had polio. Knowing them and seeing their suffering, I was excited about Rotary's Polio campaign. Seeing Rotary take on challenges like this one was another key to my joining Rotary over some of the other quality organizations in our town and their dedication to its eradication goes a long way to keeping me a member. Speaking of the campaign against Polio, DG Joe Saloom just put out some statistics showing that there are about 800 new cases this year as of December and this is one half of what they were this time last year. We are winning the war on Pol io !

Another key point in retaining members is programs. Quality, interesting, on topic programs go a long way to keeping members. We instituted the procedure of announcing the program and speaker via email a day or two prior to each meeting. While I think this is beneficial, it can be a double edged sword. I've watched attendance after we send out these notices. The members who ALWAYS come, are there. But the attendance of members who usually come is directly affected by the upcoming program. A few weeks ago, we had Senator Elect Billy Beasley come and speak to our group. Attendance was very good. Other, possibly less interesting programs had poorer attendance. If you look at your club's attendance, I'm sure you'll see there is a direct correlation between the program and the attendance.

Your venue also contributes to maintaining members. A nice venue with a good meal will always go a long way to keeping members. When I lived in Peachtree City Georgia, I was a member of a local motorcycle gang.. the moo cow bikers, sponsored by Chik fil A. It's where I met my wife. A good meal was always part of the ride plan. Seems like eating is always welcome and contributes to the event!

Seldom does the presence or lack of one of these points motivate a member to remain a member but taken as a whole, it creates the environment that makes folks want to belong.

Let's review: Accurate and timely reporting, identify and pursue members from a diverse pool, do things that inspire members to be members, meet their needs and expectations, and do it in a nice environment. These are just a few ideas. Membership is a tough nut to crack. It takes a consistent effort to recruit members and to keep them members after they join. A club that answers the points mentioned today will go a long way to solving their membership challenge.

Written by :

Eric R. Lewis