Each week that I attend my Rotary Club reminds me this is not my Father’s Rotary Club. The people who were there when I joined four decades ago wouldn’t recognize the gathering. Without a doubt, we still do the pledge, tell a joke, sing a song and have an invocation. The announcements are strikingly familiar and the food hasn’t changed all that much.
The difference is in the membership. As you can see we are becoming far more representative of the community where we live. We are also becoming younger, on average, and definitely a lot more attractive. The three who agreed to have their picture taken with me are all professionals within the definitions of our past, but they are also representative of the future. If you and your Rotary Club are clinging to the past you will soon be just that; the past.
I have been known to tell the story of my survey of members who didn’t want to bring representatives of the other half of society into Rotary 27 years ago regarding why they opposed the change. They gave me five reasons:
Fifth among those was the tradition of telling jokes. And it’s true that some of the ladies do tell jokes that are a little more risqué then we were used to hearing over the first eighty-two years.
The fourth of those reasons was the centerpieces. True enough, we managed to get by with salt and pepper shakers for all of those years, but now we have flowers and other attractive adornments to the luncheon table.
Third among those concerns was the related topic of linen table cloths. For decades we managed to get by with plastic table coverings where we could write our names as a reminder of who we were and where we always sat.
The second most voiced concern was the one I voiced. It had to do with deserts at the weekly meeting and sure enough, as soon as we were under the leadership of our first women president the deserts were replaced with salads.
But, it turns out that the number one reason many of the old timers didn’t want to open up our membership was far simpler. For more than eighty years we had gotten by with modest goals and objectives and always ended the year with self-congratulatory celebrations of our success. Then we opened up our membership; and now we have to eradicate polio, bring clean water to every village in the world and create a better world for people who are not even born.
It turns out that we owe great debt of gratitude to all of those new members who have transformed our Father’s Rotary Club into an organization that can, and will, prosper and grow for many years to come. Embrace the future and go invite one of those sixty plus million people who want to have the experiences we all value; the experience of serving other with the satisfaction that comes with it.