Membership

CLUB SERVICE / MEMBERSHIP 

Club service and Membership Report  for Club Assembly 2024/2025

The biggest problem we have in Rotary in many parts of the world, and particularly in these islands, is the declining membership. Basically, we have half the people to do our work that we used to have, therefore half the pool of people to take office at any level from club to the top.         We have Presidents taking office for the second and third time, we have a governor in situ for the second year running, this has never happened before in this district except after a death.  We are also losing clubs.

We need more members pure and simple, but we need to make Rotary attractive to young, middle, and older people alike. AND most of all we need to make it affordable to younger people especially. A chicken and

egg situation. Less members, higher costs, higher costs less members. 

We have lost 2 members in the last month, one primarily for reasons of   cost, and another, our past President elect for many reasons, but he also asked the question “Does the hierarchy of Rotary with all their ideas about big business, and younger people, understand that in this country many areas do not have big businesses?” As Dave said, on Portland we almost have no business at all, and certainly younger people cannot afford the costs of being a member, with or without a meal.

I asked at the last District. Meeting if the returning money coming to the clubs due to a surplus in District could be used to reduce the District subs…  The answer was in the Negative. This young man that we have lost, a superb worker, thinks the people higher up the chain do not understand the problems in the clubs.  I must say I tend to agree.

We need to think of ways to make the club more available to a different membership, membership without eating, reduced subs for really younger people, paying for this is not my brief, but we need to think outside the box, or we will go under.

This committee intends to re-introduce fireside chats to have an off the record discussion about subjects that need to be aired. Things that are not understood. Questions and answers.    Misunderstandings too.

We intend to ask our Past Everything member to do these, as I do not want him to dwindle away for want of some work, and he has forgotten more than I will ever know about this wonderful organisation. I personally want to re-organise the information meetings for prospective members, if we ever get any.

They need to know exactly what is required of them before they join and especially be under no illusions about the costs, and how a club works.

Our President wishes the Club Service/Membership Committee to co-ordinate the programme in the club as far ahead as is reasonable, hopefully a good 3 months. Now that we only have 2 full meetings a month, it limits the time for discussion.

To this end all 3 committees have been asked to organise a speaker or club event at the meeting on the 4th Tuesday of each month. It can be anything you like. Each committee has been given an allocated month on which to do this, Youth this month and September,    CS/M July and Oct.  and International/TRF In August and November, and so on in sequence.

Our President wishes all committee chairs to get in touch with their counterparts on district, and I have passed on that relevant information to those involved.

Communication between committees is essential, so I am asking all three committees to let membership know when they have organised a speaker or an event, asap, and I will amend my large wall chart accordingly.  (I don’t understand what a spread sheet is!!)   Also please clear speakers with us so we do not have a clash.

Now at the risk of getting a rotten apple hurled at me I am going to ask that the WhatsApp group, which is a superb way of chatting together unofficially, is not used for replies to official questionnaires like meals and attendance. Margaret does a brilliant job co-ordinating all our requests but cannot be expected to trawl though every avenue of communication or use her phone to find out who is coming to the meal.

So, forgive me for repeating this hairy subject but we need to help her with a very difficult job.

Judy