Looking to start a new club? Or simply looking for new ways to refresh your club?

In August all members of District 9999 received invitations, via the Friday District mailout, to participate in a series of workshops in Christchurch, Dunedin and via Zoom facilitated by Andy Rajapakse, Past District Governor 9640, Zone’s new style club specialist with the support of Barbara Mifsud the Regional Membership Officer of Rotary international based in Sydney.

During a 14-day Rotary Membership Roadshow, they travelled over 1400 kms conducting 12 workshops in 10 cities across all 5 Rotary Districts in New Zealand, engaging with over 300 Rotary Club and District leaders. The District 9999 workshops were the last in the series.

In their interactive and exciting workshops, Andy led us through some reinvented club models and new style Rotary club models like the Satellite (or Branch) Club, Passport, Corporate and Cause Based Rotary Clubs, revealing how they attracted and increased membership in existing clubs and grow Rotary. Since 2018, Andy has personally formed eight new style Rotary clubs in District 9640. During Andy's District Governor year in 2020-2021 in Gold Coast, Australia, he led District 9640 to attract 384 new members to their clubs in 365 days and recorded a net increase of over 170 members with an all-time high 14.4% growth, making them the 25th largest growth Rotary District in the world. He and his team achieved this milestone during the Covid-19 Pandemic year by starting 5 new Rotary Clubs, 2 Satellite Rotary Clubs, 3 Rotaract Clubs, one Interact Club and a Rotex Club for YEP Alumni. All in one Rotary year. He also helped grow 31 of the 53 existing clubs.

The workshop started off with one simple question, are we relevant?

Change is always a tricky pill to swallow but to move forward, change is necessary. One way to measure if our current club methods are still helping the community’s needs is to question whether the needs of our community have changed within the past couple of years. Not only will this help us better help our community, but this will also re-ignite existing member drive to remain with the club and attract new members.

Andy highlighted that Rotary’s purpose is the club, not club meetings. Not our dinners and lunches, it is our service in the community that tells the public who we are. He said, “to attract and retain members we need to first make our clubs attractive and exciting to our members and visitors”. Barbara shared with us the vast array of resources Rotary International has to support clubs reinvent and to start new clubs. This information was new to many of us and most informative.

During their brief visit to District 9999, Andy and Barbara conducted three face-to-face workshops with a Zoom option. A recording was made with Andy after the sessions which is available on the link below. During the workshop sessions our D9999 club participants identified possibilities of starting new clubs involving environmental causes, young professionals, Rotaractors, and reinventing clubs for a family-based focus. All these initiatives will be actively followed up by the D9999 Growing Rotary team working with the initiators.

Andy’s advice is “The secret to change is to focus our energy on building something new, not fighting the old.” Let’s Grow Rotary a new way!

To find the Zoom from the Roadshow you can go to:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f6luaa7mcalk6bh/video1403877843.mp4?dl=0

Content acknowledged from District 9920.

For further information contact: Nick Courtney, D9999 Growing Rotary Team leader.
COURTNEY@xtra.co.nz