Rotary Membership

Rotary Membership

By PDG Rodolfo Balmater

Rotary Challenge on Membership Growth

Month of August is declared by Rotary International as Membership Growth. Each Rotary club ( numbering more than 31,000 clubs throughout the world ) is encouraged to grow in membership. This membership issue is always foremost in the minds of Rotary leadership simply because without the increase in Rotary membership there will be less hands to get involved in the humanitarian work in the community. The essence of Rotary existence in a community is to render service to the needs of the poor or disadvantaged people are living in marginalized level. The more professionals recruited into Rotary Club means more hands are involved in community projects.

What are the challenges and issues on Rotary membership?

Rotary, being a group of professional volunteers, are mandated to render service into the community. These types of services could be in the areas of (a) health & personal hygiene (b) literacy or education program, (c) livelihood or community self –sustaining activities (d) clean water & protection (e) environmental issues related to tree-planting (f) uplifting vocational program, (g) goods & relief supplies on disaster areas.

To address the needs of marginalized or disadvantaged sector of our community is a continuous commitment among professional volunteers like Rotarian. Indeed, in our lifetime, there is always poor or disadvantaged people who may need help . Hence, Rotary’s existence is primarily to address this needs in the community.

But the challenge of Rotarians today is how to recruit more membership. In the last 10 years , Rotarians in Indonesia only reached between 1650 to 2000 members. Every year, the number moves up and down within this range of below 2,000. The biggest number of Rotarians with more than 200 membership are registered in the following cities (a) Jakarta (b) Surabaya(c) Jogjakarta (d) Denpasar & (e) Bandung.  The other cities in Indonesia ranges from 20 to 70 membership.

Based on the above, the Rotary  membership in Indonesia is not growing. There are varied answers, among others, (a) expensive (b) too tough because of weekly meeting, (c) too many old members (d) boring & dull meeting, and many other reasons.

What are the benefits of joining Rotary organization?

When some active Rotary members were asked as to why they join and still remain as members of Rotary, the following answers were given:

(a)    Fellowship/Friendliness---some Rotarians expressed happiness and comfort in building up friends in the community. Friends who are coming from different disciplines.  Today, noticeably, professionals are grouped  according to their vocations such as Association of Medical Doctors, Association of Accountants, Association of Engineers, etc. Rotary organization does not allow membership of the same profession more than 3 people per Rotary Club. In fact, Rotary encourages diversity on the vocation of  membership. Hence, one benefit gains as Rotary member is to widen your network of friends.,

(b)   Leadership Training----being a Rotarian you will have  a chance to lead a group of professional volunteer or become a President of the club. The moment you become a leader, a training is prepared for you not only how to do your tasks but also how you do you manage your relationship with people . Relating yourself with fellow volunteers  also need a training. Being a Rotarian, you may have a chance to  learn many things

(c)    Affiliation with International Organization--- the major benefit of being a Rotary member is the access to worldwide membership of nearly 1.3 million members of more than  120 countries . If your business travel brings you to Russia, Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan or America , you can access the directory of Rotary International and certainly there is a friend who can help you address your needs in a particular country. And the brand ROTARY is acceptable and well known in many countries in the world. 

(d)   Teaching the Meaning of Service to Humanity---As an individual, certainly, we can offer our help to poor people. But just imagine if you are attached/connected with a big organization like Rotary International, your humanitary service could become much bigger for the community. A good example, donating a complete Blood Bank Facilities like in Denpasar may cost a minimum investment of US$300,000. It is certainly too big to be donated by individual earning from Indonesia. With the initiative of few Rotarians in Denpasar and their little donations of US$ 5,000 , many got interested from other countries on this project , and they also contributed and matched by Rotary Foundation and brought in money to Indonesia at US$300,000. Many community projects similar to this like the donations of clinic and orphanage house in Banda Aceh which reached more than US$1 million from various Rotary Clubs overseas.

What are our action plans to grow Rotary membership?

It is obvious that Rotary today is facing a big challenge in terms of membership growth. There are so many equivalent organizations who are also aggressively campaigning for membership growth. In our local community, there are also many NGOs or social clubs that are in need of additional members.

But the real challenge for each Rotarian is how do we embrace the philosophy of  Rotary International. ?  How do we differentiate our Rotary membership from other competing organizations?  Are the benefits gained as a Rotarian as mentioned above no longer attractive to new members? Or are we happy to maintain a Rotary membership in Indonesia less than 2,000 people. And yet around us , we see opportunities to offer humanitarian service. In fact, we need more hands to help. We need more younger people to think how to help our community? We need the younger generation to prepare to take over the Rotary leadership.

As the saying goes, if an organization like Rotary membership  stops growing---that is the beginning of its decline and eventually obliterated like dinosaurs that remain instinct and only interested to see its skeleton & bones. Rotary’s motto is Service Above Self. A wonderful motto which is difficult to implement nowadays where people are more oriented on materialism and an attitude of “me-first” mentality. Self centered attitude is counter productive to building harmony & goodwill in our society. And Rotary’s motto of Service Above Self is a God given-gift for every one to embrace and implement. Hence, join Rotary and learn the true meaning of sharing & caring to humanity.