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All rights reserved, No part of this e-book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN # ISBN: 978-1-9888270-0-4

Knowledge Transfer Publishing

8650 Heritage Hill Drive

Elk Grove, CA 95624

916-601-2485

billwittich@comcastnet

www.volunteerpro.net

First Edition

Introduction

All Service Clubs Are in Trouble

A Loss of Members

What Do We Mean by Change?

Understanding Rotary Generations

Why is Change So Difficult for Clubs

10 Issues With the Younger Members

Getting Them To Join

So, How Do We Attract Younger Members?

How Can We Make Rotary More Inviting?

Membership Secrets... Are They’re Any?

Let’s Get Those Baby Boomers!

One Key Attraction Tool is Web 2.0

A Few Closing Thoughts

About the Author

Dr. Bill Wittich is a speaker, consultant, and author in the field of leadership, motivation, and nonprofit management.

For the past twelve years, Bill and his wife Ann have traveled an average of 200 days a year. Their speaking schedule has taken them to all corners of the United States and through much of Europe.

His doctorate is from the University of Southern California where he continues to serve as a mentor to graduate students in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development.

Dr. Wittich has authored seven books in the association and non-profit field.

He is Past President of the Rotary Club of Laguna Sunrise in Elk Grove, California and he serves as an Assistant Governor for District 5180. He is an instructor for membership at the Far West President-Elect Training Seminars.

They enjoy living in Elk Grove, where they enjoy cooking, collecting antiques, and learning about red wine.

“Thanks so much for keeping membership a top priority in this great organization. You are correct when you say ‘CHANGE IS DIFFICULT’, but without change we will never succeed in our membership quest.”

Brenda Cressey, Past District Governor District 5240 2001-02
TRF Endowment/Gift Advisor - Zone 26

Dr. Bill Wittich makes us realize in his new book that we must first make our club attractive to others before they will want to become a member of our club. This sounds so simple, but so many clubs have overlooked this key concept.”

David Gallagher, Past District Governor,
Rotary District 5220

“Bill Wittich knows his Rotary very well indeed and he seems to understand the art of motivating volunteers far better than most of us. His newest book speaks clearly and simply about making Rotary attractive to its prospects.

David Cresson, PDG Rotary District 5150

North America Area Coordinator,

Rotary Public Image Resource Group, 2005, 2006

“Dr. Bill Wittich is always on the leading edge of the evolving conversation on how to address membership. “Attract” is an approach that not only is superior to “Recruit” but it also has a continuing impact on “Retain.”

Don Murphy, Past District Governor 2010-11
Rotary District 5220

“Once again, Dr. Wittich puts it right up front and personal: There is relief for membership malaise, but the collective WE must make it work.”

Bill Short, District Governor 2013-14
Rotary District 5180

“Bill Wittich has done it again. he goes straight to the heart of Rotary International’s biggest dilemma: MEMBERSHIP. His insights into the problem of declining membership and how to address this is spot on. Every President, President-Elect and Membership Chair should have a copy of this book.”

Joe Grebmeier, District Governor Elect
Rotary District 5230

“Overall It’s Great!”

Hal Darcey, Past District Governor, District 5000
Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu

“Bill’s new book gives us the path to stronger Rotary clubs!”

Don Kremer, Rotary Coordinator, Zone 26, 2010-2013
Past District Governor, District 5230

Other Publications
By Dr. Bill Wittich

The Care and Feeding of Volunteers

Model Volunteer Handbook

A Collection of Volunteer Forms

Celebrate Differences

77 Ways to Recruit Volunteers

77 Ways to Recognize Volunteers

Keep Those Volunteer Around

Energize Your Rotary Club

This book is dedicated to all the World-Class Rotarians I’ve met in my life who continue to inspire me

Chapter 1

Introduction

This is a book about membership and change. Maybe it is about change and then membership. Change is hard for everyone, but very difficult for Rotary clubs. John Kotter in an article on change in the Harvard Business Review said that 70% of change efforts fail to achieve their desired goal. Wow! Should we bother? My answer is that Rotary is usually in that other 30 percent that gets things done. Think about Polio Plus or the Peace Forums or clean water around the world. Rotary can make change happen. But change in our clubs has been a slow movement.

Yes, this book is about
Change and Membership.

Club leaders have the ability to build a nimble team that is engaged and focused on continually getting better. They can see their clubs grow, expand and build better communities.

Membership is a critical change area for all service clubs. It is critical to continue to add new members, because each year members will leave for a variety of reasons. They move away, they pass away, they lose their interest, and they run out of money, they disagree with the way the club is going. It does not really matter why they leave, it is important to find new people to replace those who leave. Too many clubs spend months thinking about how to recruit new members into their club. It is more important to find out how to attract members into your club.

If your club is not attractive to a number of people in your community, you might as well stop recruiting. Attraction must come first. This is a major change for clubs to move from an older view of recruitment to a new area of building attraction.

Wikipedia tells us that attraction means the drawing of one object towards another. In Rotary it means drawing one person toward a Rotary club.

The question we need to deal with in this book is how do we entice guests to visit our club and not only come back but convert them into committed and dedicated Rotarians.

We will need to decide exactly who we want to attract into our club and why. We know that our current RI President Ron Burton is telling us to be engaging and if we engage our guests will it help them to decide to join. Maybe Seth Godin has it right in his book Tribes when he says that a tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. Godin says that “Tribes need leadership, they need connection and growth and something new.” They need change. His major theme in the book rings with me. That is “You can’t have a tribe without a leader and you can’t be a leader without a tribe.” Is he talking about Rotary? I think so. Where is a strong club without a strong leader? And where is a strong leader without a club?

Maybe this book is about change, membership and being a strong leader with a tribe.

Rotary International President Ron Burton said it so well. “We’re not asking just anyone to join Rotary. We’re looking to attract busy, successful, motivated people who care.” The key thought from President Ron is that we are not looking to recruit warm bodies; we are looking to attract the right people into Rotary. Attracting the right people means you must put together a program that will help to locate these people. In the corporate world, we call that marketing. In the Rotary world, we call that Public image.

You have to build your marketing first before anyone even knows you exist.

Marketing is a tool used to build attraction in your club. Public image allows people to see what the Rotary club offers even before they see themselves in it. Marketing in the past meant putting articles in your local newspaper. Today it means using various forms of social media to gain the eyes of those prospective members.

Your audience needs to know that you are in their community. Prospective members either live or work in your community and in either case they need to know that you are there. It is true that you need to invite people to visit your club, but unless they are aware of all the good things your club does, it will be more difficult.

Today many Rotary clubs are not effective in attracting members into its fold. Their membership numbers have not changed over the past year with the exception that they may have lost a few members. You visit the typical club and you see the mix of middle-aged and older members. They may have added a few women and ethnic members to its roster but not many younger members. This book will explore how clubs can be successful in growing its membership. I think most of us will agree that if Rotary is to remain a strong service club then we must continue to add new members.

These new members must include a mix of younger, middle aged and older members. It must include gender and ethnic diversity as well. It is this variety in membership that increases the quality of a club’s membership.

Mark Levin in Millennium Membership says it so well, “It’s not your father’s (or Mother’s) organization anymore.” He explains that only the clubs that understand the value of adding diversity will succeed in attracting members of any age.

This means that clubs may need to change their membership process. It is critical for all Rotary leaders to understand that what brought them into Rotary may not be the same thing that will bring this next member into Rotary. Rotary International is making a number of changes, but many club members are not paying attention to these changes. Or, even worse, they may be fighting these changes and trying so hard to maintain the status quo.

It may not even be the idea of change; it may be the speed of this change.

We will discuss these changes and offer suggestions for helping clubs adjust and understand what it will take to find new members.

We must think about change, not only the changes in the Rotary organization, but the changes occurring today in the lives of our members. We must be aware that technology is changing everything about Rotary. My District meetings are held these days through Go-To-Meeting, where we all connect through our computers.

This saves time and allows us to stay off the road allowing our busy members more time for work and family. My point is that technology has already changed much about Rotary membership and club operations.

The goal of this book is to understand what their members expect and how to offer it to them. It is critical to understand your prospective member’s views, if we are to attract them into Rotary. We need to see what is going on in their lives, both their personal, family and Rotary lives. By understanding all three parts, it will help us to see how it affects their view of Rotary membership.

Your club needs to invest in technology and use it to attract new members.

Technology such as websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter are no longer an option, they are a given.

Rotary clubs must be at the forefront of social media to attract new members, particularly younger members. Just take a look around Starbucks and watch those young professionals interacting with their smart phones, tablets and computers. These tools are their networking lives and Rotary needs to fit into this arena.

The fresh perspective and out-of-the-box thinking that younger members can bring may open new avenues for your club. Through this, younger members may be able to bring a new network of younger members that will be the future for carrying out your Rotary mission. While young people can often be counted on to know what is new and hot in the technology world, they can bring more to the table than just being able to set up the LCD projector with ease. Many young people are enthusiastic fundraisers, marketing whizzes, financial geniuses, and special-events gurus.

While the current excitement is finding young people to bring into Rotary, there may well be another group of prospects that we might focus on. Those are that large group of retiring Boomers that could help to increase our membership. These Boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 of them each day for the next decade. They are a vital group of healthy, wealthy and wise potential Rotarians that we may overlook if we are not aware of them.

They are very different from those young prospects in many ways and the attraction process is different for both groups.

You may wonder why I am not looking at those in-between ages, those prospects between the ages of 40 and 65. I am certainly interested in bringing them on board, but in many cases they are already our members and are leading our clubs today. I see this group of 50 year olds at the President ElectTraining Seminars preparing to take the reins of their clubs.

But I hope that this book will convince you that all generations are needed for Rotary to continue its drive to the future. It is just that my focus will be on these two primary areas of focus, the younger ones and those Baby Boomers, and hopefully you will agree with me or at least give me a chance to convince you of the value of your focus on these two generations.

One thing that both the younger and the Boomer generations have is endless energy

This is energy that they are looking to throw into a cause that they care about, or that will further their professional careers or retirement days. Incorporating both generations into your club can add this much needed shot of energy and foster new, different, and progressive ideas that can reenergize the club. If you expect the best from a young member, you will get it. If you expect that the new Boomer members will give their all, you are right I believe all Rotarians are in agreement that we need to attract new members into our clubs. Let’s get started by thinking about why we are concerned with membership.

Chapter 2

All Service Clubs are in Trouble

While all service clubs are losing members for a number of reasons, the nation’s three largest, Rotary, Lions’, and Kiwanis are losing the most members. But we are most concerned about Rotary’s loss in membership. Rotary membership in the United States dropped from its peak of 445,434 in 1996 dropping down to 341,951 in 2013.

Lisa Johnson in Mind Your X’s and Ys says that traditional social groups, including Rotary, Elks, and chambers of commerce are struggling to maintain membership. But service clubs are not alone, according to the latest Member Marketing Benchmark Report; over half of the professional associations in the United States are experiencing a decline in membership.

It appears that the tough economy, too many competing organizations, and all those Internet resources are making it harder to attract members. “In previous generations, the only way to network was to join a professional organization, but now a lot of the benefits that someone gets socially can be achieved online,” says Lauren Hefner, director of membership for the Virginia-based Laboratory Products Association. “We’re a lot less likely to do something in person that we can do online without having to travel or spend money.”

Service clubs are fighting a variety of challenges.

Their members are growing older and very few young people are signing up to take their place. The clubs also are having a hard time getting the public to understand just what it is that service clubs do. “I think the biggest misconception people have about service clubs is that we’re a bunch of old guys getting together to eat,” said Rotarian Marty Wood of Linwood, Washington. “We have to get the understanding out there that we do good things in the community.”

The current economy may be one issue for this declining membership, but there appears to be many other reasons for this loss. But the economy is certainly an issue for many current and potential members.

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam makes a powerful argument that in the last several decades of the twentieth century, all sorts of community groups and in particular, service clubs have begun to fade. Putnam states that ... “ It wasn’t so much that old members dropped out, at least not anymore rapidly than age and the accidents of life had always meant. But community organizations were no longer continuously revitalized, as they had been in the past, by freshets of new members.”