RI President-elect Gary Huang visited my Rotary Club yesterday to recognize our 75th anniversary. He brought a little fun with his trade mark happy clap; and he left behind a lot of inspiration among those in attendance. One of the Rotarians in attendance commented that every Rotary International president seems fixated on membership growth and raising more money. He wondered if just one of them couldn’t be satisfied with over 1.2 million members.
That comment brings to mind my belief that our members are our internal customers and more members would translate into more money for those many things we do – worthwhile programs and projects that all have growing needs. Growing the membership would seem like a natural way to live both Ron Burton’s encouragement to engage Rotary and change lives with Gary Huang’s theme of light up Rotary.
Like every other enterprise, Rotary needs to define the demographics of our market place. I have a long held and often cited belief that the right number of potential members in our communities would be somewhere around 1%. Either those who are among or those who aspire to be among the top 1% of every community are the people who should be members of an organization like ours. With more than 7 billion people in the world today we can easily calculate that 1% represents more than 70 million people in our demographic group of potential members of Rotary.
It is no wonder that all of those Rotary leaders are fixated on membership growth. The simple truth is that they see a LARGE potential for our organization. Their great challenge is that our membership can’t be grown at the Rotary International level, it can’t be grown at the District level, it can’t be grown at the Club level; Membership growth only comes from one member inviting someone to visit a club function and then extending the invitation to join Rotary.
I have averaged more than one new member a year for over 25 years, but haven’t done so this Rotary year. That means I need to get going and go find someone who I can do the favor of bringing the light of Rotary into their life.