President Kelvin acknowledged this monthly theme by asking John Mackintosh from the Membership Committee to speak to the group.John emphasised that this was an opportune occasion being ‘Membership’ month in the Rotary calendar. He said that from the surveys completed in the focus groups earlier in the year, the main points to come out were:
Who are we?
Is our club attractive? Out of this came ‘Blueprint 2024’. We had no new members in the 2022- 2023 Rotary year in fact we lost members, and in 2023-2024 we need to reverse that trend.
He stated that, “90% of you here tonight are here because someone invited you to come along. We all need to be recruiters”. The ‘Roadblocks’ to this happening are that we say we have no one to ask or that we have a fear of being turned down.
Speaking to this, our own “Salesman” President Kelvin stated that “everyone is in sales.” We have three key areas we need to keep in mind: Identify who might like to be involved in Rotary.
Just ask them along – you don’t have to sell anything, as they will realise, we are a community minded organization.
Then follow up. Key people to target could be: People who are recently retired
Solo people People who have recently moved to Napier.
People recently moved into a Retirement Village He challenged the members, “Let’s induct 12 new people into our club in this Rotary year?” He added that it’s good to call on the membership committee to assist if there is someone whom you feel may be a prospective member.
He finished by saying,” Each One Bring One” – the International Rotary President’s message from two years ago. (NB In that light next week has a great speaker. This could be the opportunity for some “ones” of us to bring one.