Effective Clubs

1. Effective Clubs And Effective Members

2. IS YOUR CLUB EFFECTIVE? EFFECTIVE? What does that mean? Lets see if we can make some sense of the question by looking at a few scenarios.

3. Rotary was formed to develop friendship. SO has it been effective for you? How many friends do you have in Rotary – and how many friends have you put into Rotary? If you don’t answer “a lot” to both questions maybe your Club is not effective from your viewpoint.

4. If you Club handed back its charter would it be missed by anyone other than the current members? If not then maybe your Club is not effective.

5. A small Club in a small community is often the life-blood of that community. A big Club in a big city might do much more and earn a lot more money but does that make it more important? Probably not. On that test Queenstown is more effective than San Francisco, or Sydney or even Hobart. The Rotary Club of Queenstown would be severely missed on the West Coast if it ceased to exist. Would your Club be missed?

6. Imagine you had a make-up at your last meeting. The visiting Rotarian mumbled his introduction and sat alone. He was not invited into any group so he had a drink on his own. At the end of the meeting he said his farewells and left. The next day you found out that it was the World President visiting incognito.

7. Would you be happy with the impression he would have taken away or would you be embarrassed?

8. Message to the Secretary If you had a phone call tonight to advise that the Prime Minister requested the right to address your meeting, and would be accompanied by a National TV crew to record his speech.

9. How many members would you need to contact to request improved dress standards or better behaviour? Maybe you would suggest a couple have a wash, or a shave. Maybe you would make some calls to recommend that some members should do a make-up somewhere else.

10. If your Club was requested to front the Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission to justify last year’s financial documents, would you be comfortable or would you need to do some “re-arranging of the details”?

11. BENCHMARKS FOR AN EFFECTIVE CLUB

12. Is your Community growing or shrinking? • Is your Membership growing or shrinking at the same rate? • Does your Club represent a fair cross-section of your Community’s leaders and business people? • When you ask a Leader in your Community to join Rotary is the expectation that they will say “Yes” or “No”? • If the answer is “No”, Why? • Is Membership viewed as a honour or an obligation?

13. Does reducing standard to increase numbers make your Club better or worse? • Would you accept the local Brothel Madam? • Well they did in WA • Would you accept Chopper Reid? • After all, he is a successful author. • What about Brian Burke? • He is an ex- Premier of WA • When you are prepared to “Create a Classification” does that make it less likely that the upper echelon of business leaders in your Community will agree to join your Club? • Is exclusivity a benefit or a liability?

14. Ensure that your Club is Professionally run. • vMeeting Procedure. • v   On time and with an Agenda • v   Good guest speakers • v   Good projects • Monthly Board Meetings • Agenda • Accurate Reports • Full Financials • No waffle

15. Welcoming and Friendly Ø     To everybody but especially to Visitors. If you want people to join your Club you had better make them welcome. Your next guest speaker is probably a potential member, your next visiting Rotarian may have just moved to your area and is looking for a Club to join.

16. 1.Make a Difference Ø     Community ØYour region Ø     State Ø     National Ø     International Be recognized as honest, reliable and there for the good of the world. Rotary membership is not a vehicle for self-promotion.

17. Compassion  Make sure that your Club is recognized for its compassion. Your budget is irrelevant to the Australian economy. What Rotary does, and the lives it affects is a factor of how well it spends that money and how much of its heart and soul it is prepared to give to those who need it.

18.  “Molly Project” The Club is no longer in existence; it simply faded away. Not long before folding I did a make-up and it was obvious that the small membership had accepted its fate and the members were either leaving Rotary or looking to move to other Clubs. I asked them what they were doing in their community, and the President said with some resignation that they were only doing the Molly Project.

19. Molly lived alone; very elderly but otherwise very healthy. She had no family, did not receive Meals on Wheels, or home nursing. The Club had a roster of members to visit Molly and take her to do her shopping. They picked her up to go to the Doctor and all the other essentials in her life. For Molly this would have made her life worth living. So why apologize for this?

20. San Francisco DG Visit In 1999 or thereabouts the DG of San Francisco area had told his Clubs that he wanted to see some compassion for those who were doing it tough. At one of the larger Clubs the members were met by a street person, dirty and in filthy clothes, in a cardboard box at the door of the venue. Obviously the worse for wear from his bottle of grog, he was not the image the Club wanted for the DG visit.

21. Members requested he move away and offered to buy him a meal elsewhere. He refused to go. The requests became more strident until he stood up and took off the coat, the dirty wig and the false beard. Yes, it was the District Governor! His speech centred on the lack of compassion that he had just witnessed.

22. Christmas Carols A club that visits a nursing home at Xmas to sing Carols for residents spends no money and earns no money but does a service beyond anything that money can buy. The true value of service is how much you give of yourself.

23. A long time ago Mark Twain said “Rotary claims to do great things, but normally they just do lunch” Make sure he was not talking about your Club.