Like every Rotary club we needed to increase our membership. It’s quite simple – without a sizable group, running projects becomes difficult. The same people can’t be asked to step up for each project again and again without risking burn out. Even with the best of attitudes (which all Rotarians have, right?) it gets difficult to keep diving into the pool on a regular basis.Where do we begin? The first thought is to have a reception to showcase the club. Ok, it’s not a bad idea but many organizations run many events and the bulk are not successful. It’s a buyer’s market. You need to show your potential members how your club represents their best opportunity for volunteering. You need a story that is accurate and compelling.
For this year’s membership project, we decided to host a cocktail reception. The first decision was the site. It was an important choice. We wanted something special, but not over the top. A full dinner would have exceeded our budget, but we wanted something better than average. We booked a local upscale restaurant and chose a menu of passed appetizers, beer, wine and soda. The party was scheduled from 6:00 – 7:30 pm allowing people to attend after work without commanding the entire evening. We relied on the restaurant’s recommendations for food and drinks and were quite pleased with their suggestions.
We limited our formal publicity to Facebook postings and concentrated on having each of our members reach out to friends and business contacts. Today, we are overwhelmed with ads, postings, emails and news releases promoting a variety of events. There are so many that it’s rare that any of them get much notice. A personal invite says that we are interested specifically in you and believe your membership would be mutually beneficial.
Eleven guests joined our party that evening. I was quite certain that if we did a 20 to 30 minute presentation we would lose everyone. People just don’t want to listen to long talks, especially at a relatively short event. So we set up a projector showing PowerPoint slides of our members at our events. No voice over, no music and no overt suggestions to “sit down and watch our show”. Instead we did a series of four speeches, each less than two minutes, spaced through the evening. Four different speakers said, “Here is why I like being a member of the Lynnfield Rotary”. In the end, no one felt oppressed by the speakers, but our message was received.
We spent time preparing our message. In the weeks before the party we voted to expand our membership categories. The most important of these were Corporate, Non-Profit and Family memberships. The point was to make our club as easy to join as possible. We also needed to acknowledge that business responsibilities had to be honored and we need a way to allow that to happen while keeping up the involvement in the Rotary Club. The ability to add associate members who could attend meetings in place of, or in addition to a regular member had significant value and appeal. We spent time at several club meetings before the party discussing these details. By the day of the event, all our members were familiar with the details of each category and were able to convey that message to our guests. District 7930 provided support for this project through a District Mini Grant for membership activities which helped us offset the cost of the evening.
Even the best planned event requires a focused follow up. Our party was held on a Thursday night. The following day, each prospective member received an email thanking them for attending and inviting them to our next club meeting the following week. Out of the 11 guests at the reception, 5 showed up at the next meeting. Several of them were candidates for Corporate or Non-Profit memberships, adding to the number of new members we anticipated. All of them became members.
The last step was to insure new member retention. The goal was to get them through the initiation process in a timely manner and involve them in projects as fast as possible. Each will be assigned to projects that are planned for the June- July time frame. Having been an attendee at a District new member orientation event, I am a strong believer in its value. Next year I would schedule our new member event to occur 2 to 3 weeks before the District orientation. That would allow us to invite the prospects to our meeting 1 week after the party, and then send them directly to the orientation the following week. That sequence would probably lessen our requirements for a “fireside chat” since the orientation covers most of those topics.
It looks like we will be adding 7 new members and 4 associate members. We also have 2 inactive members returning to the club, and 2 more members who could not be fully involved moving to associate member status. We also added 2 members earlier in the year. All things considered it was a very good year for membership.
Ron Block
President, Lynnfield Rotary Club
President, Lynnfield Rotary Club