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 eight books in the association and non-profit field. His client list includes a large number of school districts, hospitals, libraries, police and fire departments, labor organizations, associations, and most of the national non-profit organizations. His most recent book, “Celebrate Differences” was published this year and is available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.
He is Past President of the Rotary Club of Laguna Sunrise and currently serves as an Assistant Governor for Rotary District 5180. He was served as an instructor at Far West PETS in membership.
It takes as much energy to wish
as it does to plan.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I think the title ENERGY or this book’s title ENERGIZE says it all as far as Rotary club membership goes. If we do not plan to energize a club’s membership, the club will become stagnant and eventually die. Clubs, especially in North America, are near a crisis mode in membership. We add a few members and lose a few members. Our recruiting is weak but the real issue is that we lose many of these new members within a year. What can we do to change this trend? I suggest that we need to learn to energize our club.
Energizing a club really means changing what we do to both attract and hold on to new members. Clubs have not changed in the past 100 years with the exception of allowing women to join Rotary. I understand that we now have a few e-clubs and New Generation clubs, but these do not really affect the number of clubs located across North America. We need to look critically at what we can do to change the structure of your club. This change is to help you to attract a new audience of members. I realize that many members simply do not wish to change anything. They are very happy with things just as they are. But I think you realize that we are not growing and if we stay in this mode, we will die. Past International Rotary President Bill Boyd said so clearly when he said that if we do not bring younger people in Rotary, Rotary will die.
This book will talk about three things that can energize our clubs. First is learning how to make clubs more attractive to new members. By this I mean what we can do to attract more members. Second, what can we do to retain those members. An issue in many clubs is learning how to hold onto our existing people. And third, how do we change the club structure to excite and energize our members, both the existing and the new ones. Three things to do: we will talk about attracting new, keeping old, and energizing the entire club. Not easy you say? Well you are so correct, but let’s get going.
As a club membership chair, I think I spent most of my time going down to the local shopping mall to put up recruiting posters, then running down to the city hall and placing my recruiting brochures on the front counter. I then had members sitting at Starbucks and greeting the people drinking their mochas and asking them to consider Rotary. I would talk at the chamber and in fact I spent many lunch times giving pro-bono presentations as a recruiting tool. I went to all the chamber of commerce mixers trying to find prospects. All of this worked very well, we had a steady stream of new members coming in the front door of our club. But we also had a steady stream of those new Rotarians going out the back door. We had a problem keeping new members. It seemed as if most of the new members got excited about Rotary and then in two months or so, that excitement began wearing off and out the door they went. I had a major recruiting and retention problem.
Maybe I had an energy issue and did not realize it. I would meet with prospects and promise them a number of things that somehow never happened at the club level. The issue seemed to be that I did not take the time to listen to what the prospect was saying or asking about Rotary. Instead I was giving the standard Rotary message about community and international service. I was talking about what the new member can do for Rotary rather than about what the club can offer them. I now realize that every prospective member has a variety of reasons why they are considering Rotary. If I do not ask them what they are looking for, but instead tell them them what they can do, it will backfire. They may come into the club but never fully connect.
Paul Krauska in his blog “Innovate Rotary” explains how a great club is all about energy. He tells us that, “You can tell the difference between great clubs and others the moment you come in contact with them by their energy. Whether it is the first time you view the club web page, the first time you walk into a club meeting or when you have the opportunity to ask a member, "What is it like to be a member of this club?" According to Krauska, you can tell an energetic club as soon as you walk in the door. Paul tells us what to do to help your members unleash their energy. Paul says that “if you notice people voting their energy elsewhere, are you a confident enough leader to ask them what's up - and then take the time to listen?” It is the theme of this book to find that energy in your club and how to direct that energy to your members and programs.
One key to an energized club is it’s change inventory.
We will talk about what it takes to attract and hold onto new Rotarians. It’s all about change. A scary term to most of us. Katie Ischkin, past president and founder of South Metro Minneapolis Evenings Rotary tells us about her approach to Rotary. She advocates a new outlook on membership and a different approach to club structure. As a change management consultant, she said she understands people's fear of change. But she stressed that her approach doesn't mean altering the core pieces of the club. Katie says, "What does change are what I call surface-level elements, the pieces that individual clubs have the power to shift and redesign, such as meeting times and locations, program structures, club member involvement, and committee formats."
In reality, to many members change is fear. Fear of change is one of the most common reasons for resistance to change because it stops you from taking any action at all. Many clubs have talked about making changes, but they then get frustrated because it seems so hard to get moving with these changes.
What is it about change that makes it so difficult, even when we realize that it is needed? In most cases fear of change stops us from taking any action. It generally is the board facing anxiety about what members will think. While some anxiety is useful and can motivate us, there are times when anxiety about something new can severely limit us, especially if there’s uncertainty about the future. Katy Ischkin tells us that “for many clubs, all it takes is opening up your minds and starting to think differently about the future of your club's membership.”
Anxiety stops clubs from making changes and makes us resist change by stirring up fears of what is not known. In Rotary, certainty is more comfortable than uncertainty. We worry about how current members will react to changes that create a different Rotary club than the one they have always enjoyed. Some of us are afraid of failing when we attempt to change our club structures. This is anxiety about not getting things right. What if we do something and it doesn’t work. What if we lose more members because of these changes?
We know that many Rotary clubs faced such an anxiety when the United States Supreme Court voted to confirm the California decision to allow women to join Rotary. At that time anxiety showed its head as a Rotary International attorney argued that this decision “threatens to force us to take in everyone, like a motel.” But it now has been twenty-five years since that decision, and after the Duarte Rotary club brought in 15 women. Talk about change, as of 2011, Rotary has 197,044 female Rotarians and 91 female district governors.
We know that many clubs have a difficult time attracting diversity into their clubs. By diversity, I mean all diversity; age, ethnicity, and gender. Rotary appears to some to still be an older white man’s club. Not unusual, since that’s what it was for many years. But how do we change that picture and begin to represent many of our communities better? The key word here again is change. By helping your club leaders and members understand what “diversityt” is, what it looks and feels like, and why it matters, we accomplish two things. We gain member buy-in and we help build member capacity to create an environment that values, supports and engages everyone. A little training helps members define what respect means to them individually as well as how it will benefit their club. They build awareness, challenge old stereotypes and comfort zones, and develop communication and conflict resolution skills proven to foster a more productive, cooperative, and respectful culture. Rotary International recognizes the value of diversity within our individual clubs. They encourage clubs to assess those in their communities who are eligible for membership, under existing membership guidelines, and to endeavor to include the appropriate range of individuals in their clubs.
A club that reflects its community with regard to professional and business classification, gender, age, religion, and ethnicity is a club with the key to its future. A good example of this push by Rotary for diversity happens on the outskirts of Amsterdam where 21 people gather at De Houten Vier restaurant each week. The group includes members of Dutch, Moroccan, Surinamese, and Turkish descent. The 14 men and seven women range in age from 28 to 69. They come from various professional backgrounds; there are designers, hotel managers, and academics as well as lawyers and accountants. Despite their differences, everyone has at least one thing in common: Rotary. The newly chartered Rotary Club of Amsterdam-Arena exemplifies the diverse membership that Rotary International leadership has stated is necessary to keep the organization strong.
Another issue with change is a fear of loss. Loss is often associated with change. Change in Rotary can mean a loss of old time members as happened in many clubs when women were allowed to join. Change can mean a loss of many things that we are used to such as singing songs or accessing fines for a variety of reasons. These changes are devastating for many members because of a loss of known routines. The reality is that we are creatures of habit and we like our routines and don’t like facing uncertainty.
When Rotarians in Walnut Creek, California, USA, found it difficult to attract young professionals to the area's morning and afternoon clubs, they set out to establish a cocktail-hour club that would accommodate busy, on-the-go schedules. Jennifer Beeman, club president of the Rotary Club of Diablo View tells us that the changes they’ve made have helped the club appeal to younger professionals and retain them. Beeman says, "They’ve created a high-energy club and clubs must be willing to make a few changes to attract younger members.”
All the breaks you need in life wait within your
imagination. Imagination is the workshop of
your mind, capable of turning mind energy into
accomplishment and wealth
In many ways, when you’re young and sexy, it’s
very annoying to be whistled at and to have
someone always trying to attract your attention,
but now when it happens I find myself registering
the fact almost warmly.
Greta Scacchi
We spend so much attention talking about recruiting new members, but maybe we should be discussing what attracts people to Rotary. Most districts hold annual seminars, and clubs hold programs aimed at how to recruit new members. Every program talks about techniques of presenting the Rotary message to a wide audience of people. We use age-old sales techniques to lure people into Rotary, but it does not seem to be working very well. In very simple terms, membership in Rotary clubs in the United States is having an issue. Rotary membership in the United States dropped from its peak of 445,434 in 1996 to 360,790 last year, according to club officials cited in the Chicago Tribune. Membership in Rotary clubs has dropped nearly 42,000 since 1995 in the USA, says Rotary spokeswoman Elizabeth Minelli.
Rotary is not alone with this membership loss. Most of North America’s century-old service clubs are losing members, the nation’s three largest, Rotary, Lions’, and Kiwanis are losing the most members. Lions’ International membership dropped from 1.45 million in 1995 to 1.3 million this year. Kiwanis membership has dropped by 20,000 since the early 1990s. Optimists International has about 94,000 members, down from 99,000 last year. Amos McCallum, a chairman of the past national presidents of the Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks, says his group has 900,000 members, down from 1.6 million in 1980. There are even fewer Masons today — by nearly a million — than there were in 1941 as the country came out of the Great Depression, says Richard Fletcher, executive secretary of the Masonic Service Association of North America. There are an estimated 3 million Masons worldwide and 1.5 million in the USA, he says, compared with more than 4 million members in the USA in 1959. The Masonic Service Association (MSA) has tracked membership figures for Masons in the United States since 1925. The numbers tell a very sad tale of the decline of one of the world’s most important fraternal organizations, slowly fading away, as T.S. Elliot says, “not with a bang, but a whimper.”
According to the 2010 Member Marketing Benchmark Report, over half of all associations in the United States have experienced a decline in membership. It appears that our tough economy, too many competing service clubs, and all those free internet resources are making it harder to attract members. According to Kiwanis One, The Kiwanis National Newsletter, “Lions and Kiwanis clubs, Shriners and other service organizations are pondering their futures as membership dwindles and average ages grow older.”
Paul Kiser in his blog which reports on Rotary membership concerns, tells us that “Rotary has been battling a significant membership issue for over 15 years.” He points out that in Rotary Zone 25 the number of clubs had increased by 20 but total membership had decreased by over 600 people. The reality is that even though Rotary brings in new members, they lose about the same number as they bring in. In seven years Rotary has brought in 1.2 million members and lost 1.2 million members. In fact the membership loss in North America is worse than on other continents.
While you can blame the current economy for this declining membership, there appears to be many other reasons for this loss. Let’s discuss why this is happening, and what can be done to stop it. The economy is certainly an issue for many current and potential members. But there are other concerns that we need to address for this loss of membership growth. In the classic book, 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.” Is Putnam talking about Rotary clubs lacking that energy that many clubs are lacking?