FIVE ways to club flexibility

Club flexibility

Research and our members' experiences have shown that when clubs have more freedom to decide how and when they hold their meetings, who they'll invite to become members, and what member engagement means, their ability to attract new members and keep current members motivated increases.

The 2016 Council on Legislation voted to give Rotary clubs more flexibility than they've ever had. The changes in policy affect when, where, and how clubs meet and the types of membership they offer.

5 ways to use the new flexibility

It's up to your club to decide how — and if — you want to use the new options. Start by reviewing the updated Standard Rotary Club Constitution to see which guidelines are flexible. Once you've decided what changes would benefit your club, edit your club bylaws to reflect them, and try them out. If you decide they aren't working, try something else.

Here are some examples of how your club can apply the new flexible options:

1. Change your meeting schedule. Your club can vary its meeting days, times, and frequency. For example, you could hold a traditional meeting on the first Tuesday of the month to discuss business and service projects and get together socially on the last Friday of the month. You just need to meet at least twice a month.
2. Vary your meeting format. Your club can meet in person, online, or a combination, including letting some members attend in-person meetings through the Internet.
3. Relax attendance requirements. Your club can ease attendance requirements and encourage members to participate in other ways, such as taking a leadership role, updating the club website regularly, running a meeting a few times a year, or planning an event. If your club is dynamic and offers a good experience for members, attendance won't be a problem.
4. Offer multiple membership types. Your club could offer family memberships to those who want to bring their families, junior memberships to young professionals with leadership potential, or corporate memberships to people whose employers want to be represented in the club. Each type of membership can have its own policies on dues, attendance, and service expectations. Rotary will count these people in your club membership and will consider them active members if they pay RI dues.
5. Invite Rotaractors to be members of your club. You can invite Rotaractors to join your club while remaining members of their Rotaract clubs. If your club chooses to, it can make special accommodations for these members, such as relaxed attendance requirements or reduced fees, as long as they are reflected in the club bylaws.

        For further details: https://my.rotary.org/en/club-flexibility

 

RI Theme 2017-18

2017-18: Rotary: Making a Difference

In 2017-18, we’ll answer the question “What is Rotary?” with RI President-elect Ian H.S. Riseley’s theme, Rotary: Making a Difference. “Whether we’re building a new playground or a new school, improving medical care or sanitation, training conflict mediators or midwives, we know that the work we do will change people’s lives — in ways large and small — for the better.”

 

For more: 

https://my.rotary.org/en/news-media/office-president/presidential-theme

Why Should I Join Rotary?

Why Should I Join Rotary?

I had a desire to give back to my community and the world. My father was social worker, so I knew a lot about it. That was about twenty one years ago joined in Rotary. I think what keeps me there is the friendship, not only with people in my local club but with Rotarians I’ve met from around many Rotary districts in India and the world.

Not only are this there many reasons to join ROTARY…

1. Friendship

In an increasingly complex world, Rotary provides one of the most basic human needs; the need for friends and fellowship. It is one of the two reasons why Rotary began in 1905.

2. Business Development

The second original reason for Rotary's beginning. Everyone needs to network. Rotary consists of a cross section of every business community. Its members come from all walks of life. Rotarians help one another, and collectively help others.

3. Personal Growth and Development

Membership in Rotary continues one's growth and education in human relationship and personal development.

4. Leadership Development

Rotary is an organization of leaders and successful people. Serving in Rotary positions is like a college education in Leadership: learning how to motivate, influence and develop leaders.

5. Citizenship in the Community

Membership in a Rotary club makes one a better community citizen. The average Rotary club consists of the most active citizens of any community.

6. Continuing Education

At each Rotary meeting, there is a programme designed to keep one informed as to what is going on in the community, nation and world via different speakers and different topics.

7. Fun (with a purpose)

Rotary is fun with a purpose - a  lot of fun. Each meeting is fun; the club projects are fun; social activities are fun; and, service is fun.

8. Public Speaking Skills

Many an individual who joined Rotary was reluctant to speak in public. Rotary develops confidence and skill in public communication - and provides opportunity.

9. Citizenship in the World

Every Rotarian wears a pin that says: "Rotary International". And every Rotarians is welcome - even encouraged to attend - at 33,000 clubs in 200+ nations and geographical regions. There are few places on the globe, which do not have a Rotary club. Instant friends in both one's own community and in the world community of 1.2+ million Rotarians.

10. Assistance When Travelling

Because there are Rotary clubs everywhere, many a Rotarian who has needed a doctor, lawyer, hotel, dentist, advice, etc�, while traveling has found same quickly through Rotary.

11. Entertainment

Every Rotary Club and District has parties and activities, which provide diversion in one's business and social life. Rotary has conferences, conventions, assemblies (and an institute), which provide entertainment in addition to Rotary information, education and service.

12. The Development of Social Skills

At various events and functions, Rotary develops one's personality, social and people skills. Rotary is for people who like people, or who want to - and who wish to help others.

13. Family Programmes

Rotary provides one of the world's largest youth exchange programmes; high school and college clubs for future Rotarians; spouse clubs and programmes, and a host of activities designed to assist family members in growth and the development of family values.

14. Vocational Skills

Every Rotarian is expected to take a part in the growth and development of his or her own profession or vocation; to serve on committees and to teach youth about one's job or vocation. Rotary helps to make one a better doctor, lawyer, teacher (or whatever one does for a living) etc.

15. The Development of Ethics

Rotarians practice a 4-Way Test which governs one's ethical standards. Rotarians are expected to be ethical in business and personal relationships.

16. Cultural Awareness

Around the world, practically every religion, country, culture, race, creed, political persuasion, language, color and ethnic identity is found in Rotary. It is a cross-section of the world's most prominent citizens from every background. Rotarians become aware of other cultures and learn to live and work with people everywhere. They become better citizens of their countries in the process.

17. Prestige

Rotary members are often prominent people: leaders of business, the professions, art, government, sports, military, religion and all disciplines. Rotary is the oldest and most prestigious service club in the world. Its ranks include executives, managers, professionals; people who make decisions and influence policy. membership is by invitation - and not everyone is invited to join Rotary.

18. Nice People

Rotarians above all are nice people; the nicest people on the face of the earth. They are important people who adhere to the policy that while it is nice to be important, it is more important to be nice.

19. The Absence of 'Offical Creed'

Rotary has no secret handshake, no secret policy, no official creed, no secret meetings or rituals. It is an open society - of men and women who simply believe in helping others.

20. The Opportunity to Serve

Rotary is a service club. Its business is mankind; its product is service. Rotarians provide community service - to both local and international communities. This is the best reason, perhap, for becoming a Rotarian; the chance to do something for somebody else. And to sense the self-fulfillment which comes in the process. And the return to one's own life. Rotarians believe in "Service Above Self"; it is richly rewarding.

"He profits most who serves the best".

Presidential message

John F. Germ

President 2016-17

July 2016

Today, we look ahead toward a Rotary year that may one day be known as the greatest in our history: the year that sees the world's last case of polio. Wild poliovirus caused only 74 cases of polio in 2015, all of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As we continue to work tirelessly toward our goal of eradication, we must also look beyond it: preparing to leverage our success into even greater successes to come.
It is tremendously important to Rotary's future that our role in the eradication of polio be recognized. The more we are known for what we've achieved, the more we'll be able to attract the partners, the funding, and, most important, the members to achieve even more. We're working hard at RI headquarters to be sure that Rotary gets that recognition. But it can't all happen in Evanston. We need you to get the word out through your clubs and in your communities about what Rotary is and what we do. We need to be sure that our clubs are ready for the moment when polio is finally eradicated – so that when people who want to do good see that Rotary is a place where they can change the world, every Rotary club is ready to give them that opportunity.
We know that if we want to see Rotary Serving Humanity even better in the years ahead, we'll need more willing hands, more caring hearts, and more bright minds to move our work forward. We'll need clubs that are flexible, so that Rotary service will be attractive to younger members, recent retirees, and working people. We'll need to seek out new partnerships, opening ourselves more to collaborative relationships with other organizations.
Looking ahead, we also see a clear need to prioritize continuity in our leadership. We in Rotary are all playing on the same team, working toward the same goals. If we want to reach those goals together, we all have to move in the same direction – together.
Every day that you serve in Rotary, you have the opportunity to change lives. Everything you do matters; every good work makes the world better for us all. In this new Rotary year, we all have a new chance to change the world for the better, through Rotary Serving Humanity.

PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE

November 2015:

One sunny morning at the end of June 1991, a van drove through the busy, rush-hour streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Winding through traffic to a northern suburb, the van arrived at the Forward Command Headquarters of the Defense Ministry. Security guards stopped it for inspection. When they did, the two suicide bombers driving the van detonated their cargo: thousands of kilograms of plastic explosives.

The roof of the building was blown off completely. Debris was strewn for blocks. In total, 21 people were killed and 175 people injured, among them many pupils of the girls' school next door. More than a kilometer away, the blast shattered every window in my home. My wife raced toward the sound of the explosion – toward our daughter's school.

Our daughter was then nine years old. That morning, she had forgotten her pencil case at home. At the moment of the blast, she was coming out of a stationer's shop, admiring her new pencils. Suddenly her ears were ringing, the air was filled with sand, and everywhere around her people were screaming, bleeding, and running. Someone pulled her into the garden of the badly damaged school, where she waited until my wife arrived to bring her back to our home – its floors still covered with broken glass.

Sri Lanka today is peaceful and thriving, visited by some two million tourists every year. Our war now is only a memory, and we as a nation look forward to a promising future. Yet so many other nations cannot say the same. Today, more of the world's countries are involved in conflict than not; a record 59.5 million people worldwide live displaced by wars and violence.

In Rotary we believe, in spite of all that, in the possibility of peace – not out of idealism, but out of experience. We have seen that even the most intractable conflicts can be resolved when people have more to lose by fighting than by working together. We have seen what can happen when we approach peace-building in ways that are truly radical, such as the work of our Rotary Peace Fellows. Through our Rotary Foundation, peace fellows become experts in preventing and resolving conflict. Our goal is that they will find new ways not only to end wars but to stop them before they begin.

Among the hundreds of peace fellows who have graduated from the program, two from Sri Lanka, one from each side of the conflict, studied together. In the first weeks of the course, both argued passionately for the rightness of their side. Yet week by week, they grew to understand each other's perspective; today, they are good friends. When I met them and heard their story, they gave me hope. If 25 years of pain and bitterness could be overcome by Rotary, then what, indeed, is beyond us?

We cannot fight violence with violence. But when we fight it with education, with understanding, and with peace, we can truly Be a Gift to the World.

Rotary Global Awards

RI President-elect K.R. Ravindran introduced a member benefits program at the 9 June closing session of the 2015 Rotary International Convention, saying that many more hands are needed to continue Rotary’s work around the world.

The program, Rotary Global Rewards, aims to boost membership and enhance member satisfaction.

“This innovative new program will allow Rotary members to connect with hundreds of businesses and service providers from around the world -- and that number is growing,” said Ravindran. “These establishments will offer Rotarians discounts and concessions on the everyday business that you do. And, in many cases, not only will you benefit, but our Foundation will as well, by receiving a contribution with each transaction.”

The program will include discounts on car rentals, hotels, dining, and entertainment. Discounts on more products and services from companies worldwide are expected to be added throughout the year.

“It will be another way to benefit from being a Rotarian and being part of the Rotary network,” said Ravindran, whose presidential theme for 2015-16 is Be a Gift to the World. “I urge all of you to become a part of that scheme.”

n  For more information:

https://www.rotary.org/en/member-center/rotary-global-rewards

Presidential Theme

RI - Presidential Theme: 2015-16

Our time on this earth is finite, and it’s always shorter than we think. How do we want to spend it? Will we give of ourselves to others, so that the world will be richer because we passed through it? Or will we spend our days, as the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote, in stringing and unstringing our instruments, while the song we came to sing remains unsung?

The glory of Rotary is that it helps us find a way to sing that song. It guides us on a path to living richer, more meaningful lives, by encouraging us to focus our attention on the things that matter — and helping each of us find our own way to be a gift to the world. If we ask ourselves what characteristics we value most in our friends, most of us would answer similarly: integrity, trustworthiness, caring, compatibility.

Our friends are not necessarily the people who are most like us but the ones who complement us, who bring out the best in us. That, to me, is precisely what we can find in Rotary. Rotary is a way to bring out the best part of ourselves, and let it guide our lives. Too often, we spend our days in pursuit of the goals that should matter least. We focus our attention on our own achievements and our own gain; we devote endless energy to the accumulation of material things. Yet at the end of our lives, no one will remember us for the cars we drove, the clothes we wore, the titles we carried, or the offices we sat in. We will not be admired for the efforts we poured into making our own lives richer or our own status higher.

In the end, our worth will be measured not by how much we acquired, but by how much we gave away. Will we avert our eyes from suffering, or will we alleviate it? Will we speak words of compassion, or will we act on them? Will we be content only to take from the world — or will we give to it?

In the 2015-16 Rotary year, our theme will be Be a Gift to the World. Every one of us has something to give — whoever we are, whatever our place in life. We can give our talent, our knowledge, our abilities, and our effort; we can give our dedication and our devotion. Through Rotary, we can take these gifts and make a genuine difference in the lives of others and in our world. It is said that we are born with our fists clenched, but we die with our hands open, and that our talents are the gift that God gave us. What we make of our talents is our gift back to God. Equally we come into this world grasping at everything, but when we leave it, we leave all material things behind as well.

Through Rotary, we can leave behind something real and lasting. Our time is now. It will never come again. Be a Gift to the World.

K.R. “Ravi” Ravindran

President, Rotary International, 2015-16