What happens when a specialist ARC, a Rotary International Regional Membership Officer, 2 ARCs, 5 DMCs and 5 DGs come together as a team? A Rotary Membership Roadshow!

Article by PDG Andy Rajapakse, Assistant Rotary Coordinator

It was an experiment with a purpose. The purpose was to create a lasting impact on the urgent need to start new style flexible Rotary Clubs to attract newer demographics and rapidly grow Rotary in New Zealand. The experiment was to run a series of small interactive workshops in all 5 Districts in New Zealand to share my “5 Step Formula to start a new club.” This year in April and May I shared the same workshop in D9970 Victoria, D9675 Sydney and D9510 in Adelaide.

What an August roller coaster it was. Weathering a freezing Kiwi winter, protecting ourselves from COVID-19 and an infectious flu while travelling to 10 cities conducting 12 interactive workshops engaging with over 300 Rotary leaders? The 39 interactive working groups came up with action plans to start 16 new style Rotary Clubs, 4 new Rotaract clubs and reinvent 19 traditional Rotary clubs in New Zealand. A great outcome.

That’s plenty of leads for our 5 District Membership Chairs, Elaine Mead in 9910, Ashwini Sadhu in D9920, Johnny Dryden in D9930, Gillian Jones and Marilyn Stevens in D9940, Nick Courtney in D9999 and 2 ARCs Tony Heyward and Andrew Hamilton to work on. Barbara Mifsud our Regional Membership Officer who joined me on this tour a I are happy with the goals we kicked and the process we set in motion. It was worth our 8000 km of travel in 15 days from Australia to New Zealand and then from the north to south and east to west of both islands of New Zealand through 5 airports, taking 7 flights and driving 1,500kms. This is what people of action do. So, what was the action we generated?

1. Created a positive and confident mindset to start new style clubs. A Yes, attitude.
2. Shared a scientific process to keep growing membership by starting new clubs.
3. Enhanced confidence to reinvent clubs to be relevant to our changing lifestyles.
4. Challenged ARCs, DMCs, DGs, DGEs and DGNs to work together on one purpose.
5. Empowered club and district leaders with new ways to attract members to Rotary.
6. Energized ARCs and DMCs to be proactive to grow Rotary in new ways.
7. Demonstrated how Regional Leaders and Staff can work together at club level.

Here is the follow up.

1. This New Zealand Roadshow was an initiative of dynamic District Governor Allan Smith of D-9920 who is compiling a reference manual for New Zealand Districts with all the action plans from the 12 workshops.
2. In the North Island ARC Tony Heyward is planning to bring together the 2 ARCs in NZ with Zone 8 Rotary Coordinator Stephen Lamont, 5 DMCs and the 5 DGs, DGEs, DGNs in November to develop a National Membership Growth Strategy for New Zealand.
3. In D9999 the South Island DMC Nick Courtney and ARC Andrew Hamilton has set up a “District Membership Task Force” to develop action plans from the workshop and set Goals for next 3 years to grow by 15% by 2025 July 1. To do this we set a process of appointing one team to start new style Rotary Clubs and another to reinvent traditional clubs. Because these strategies need different mindsets. In 90 days, I will join them to review the lead goals and how the processes worked.

“Setting a Goal is to grow or win once. Setting a process is to keep growing or winning all the time. In Rotary Zone 8 we need a continuous process of starting new clubs as a habit to keep membership growing to expand our reach” – ARC. Andy Rajapakse PDG-D9640

Join ARC Andy’s interactive Breakout Session at the 2022 Rotary Australia New Zealand Conference on 29th October 2:10pm to 3pm in “Murray Room” Canberra Convention Centre, where he will share “The 5 Step Formula to Start a New Rotary or Rotaract Club.”