3. Purpose
Ensures club are regularly evaluating current
practices and implementing new ideas to
increase their vitality
4. What’s in it for your club?
• Stresses innovation and
flexibility
• Encourages tailoring best
practices to fit club culture
• Challenges clubs to analyze
traditions and experiment
with new practices
20. Conduct club assemblies
• Hold quarterly assemblies to
solicit innovative ideas,
highlight achievements, and
showcase service projects.
• Ask members for input on
club practices, projects, and
activities.
21. Ensure leadership continuity
• Be sure current leaders
work with immediate
past and incoming
leaders.
• Consider providing
newer members with
mentors.
23. Set annual goals
• Conduct a community
assessment before setting
annual goals.
• Ask committees to propose
goals.
• Involve all members.
24. Amend club bylaws
• Review club bylaws
annually.
• Determine any needed
changes.
• Allow members to
propose new ideas.
• Test new ideas before
amending bylaws.
33. Develop a training plan
• Do our club leaders attend district meetings?
• Is new member orientation provided
regularly?
• Are ongoing educational opportunities
available for current members?
• Is a leadership development program available
for all members?
34. Assign club committees
• Recommended
– Club administration
– Membership
– Public relations
– Service project
– The Rotary Foundation
• Additional committees can be added to
support club goals.
The RI Strategic Plan stresses the importance of club innovation and flexibility. Strong clubs are those that implement new ideas to meet member needs and increase the club’s vitality.
There are about 34,000 Rotary clubs worldwide. Each club’s culture and individual practices make it unique. Clubs should embrace the qualities that make them stand out from other clubs while striving to appeal to their community as a whole.
Consider each of the best practices on the next slides as ideas that your club can discuss and, if needed, as opportunities to think of creative ways to improve in those areas. Encourage members to be open to new ideas, and be sure that any decisions that come out of your discussions have strong member support.
All clubs should have a strategic plan with a vision statement describing where they want to be in three to five years, as well as long-range goals to support that vision. All club members should have an opportunity to provide input on the plan to maximize innovative and diverse ideas.
Planning for the future keeps your club relevant to the community. It helps the club accomplish more significant projects over a longer period of time, with sustainable results.
Activities
Ask participants the following questions:
What is a vision?
What is special about your club?
What does your club do well?
Ask participants to think about what their vision for the club would be.
Pass out copies of the Strategic Planning Guide to help members understand the concept of strategic planning and begin thinking about the club’s strategic plan.
It is important to keep club members involved in the planning process and informed of all the club’s initiatives. Club assemblies are a great way to communicate with all members. Consider holding assembly devoted to assessing the effectiveness of current club practices or generating innovative ideas. This would give all members an opportunity to provide input and offer suggestions. Members will be more likely to support and participate in an effort that they have helped develop.
Activities
Ask participants the following questions:
What else could club assemblies be used for?
Have club assemblies been effective?
Have participants write down ideas they want the club to discuss at an assembly.
Rotary leadership changes annually, which can make it hard to carry out a long-range plan. To help ensure continuity, clubs should select leaders well in advance and involve them in the planning process so they have input on decisions that will affect their term.
Activities
Ask participants the following questions:
Who will your club leaders be in the next Rotary year?
Current leaders: What helped you prepare for your term? What would have helped better prepare you?
Does your club have a leadership track? If so, is it working? If not, would it help?
Have teams brainstorm a list of projects or processes that would require continuity in leadership to be carried out effectively.
A strategic plan provides a “big picture” view of the club’s future. But for the club to achieve its long-range goals, it needs to break them down into smaller, annual goals that can be achieved in each of the years covered by the plan.
The Planning Guide for Effective Rotary Clubs is a tool designed to help your club develop its annual goals.
Setting goals ensures that your club is always striving to improve rather than simply accepting current practices.
Activity
Ask participants the following questions:
What are your club’s annual goals?
How were these goals set?
Should the goal-setting process be changed?
The Recommended Rotary Club Bylaws are meant to be taken and adapted to your club. They offer a standard structure and policy, but clubs should tailor them to meet their needs. Your club’s bylaws should reflect your club’s current practices.
Activity
Have all members write down one club practice they would like to see abandoned and one they would like to see adopted.
We want members to keep coming back to meetings with enthusiasm, not feel that they are boring or an obligation. Vibrant clubs are fun and have enthusiastic members.
If your club isn’t having fun, ask members for ideas that the club could implement to make it more fun.
Strong relationships are key to member retention. If new members are not welcomed properly or included in social circles at club meetings, disinterest or tension is likely to develop.
Rotary offers networking opportunities that should be promoted in recruiting efforts. These opportunities are attractive to young professionals.
Activities
Ask participants to shout out ways the club could have more fun, and write their responses on a flip chart.
Have participants get up and find someone they don’t know very well. Have each person tell the other person about something good that happened that week.
How does your club involve members? Are members in your club engaged? If all members do is attend meetings, the club is likely not vibrant. Engage members starts with talking to them about what they enjoy and what they would like to see happen. Developing club programs and activities based on members’ interests will ensure more active members.
Activities
Ask participants to name a service project they would like to participate in, and write their responses on a flip chart. Then take one of those ideas and ask all participants to think of a skill they could bring to the project.
It is natural to fear change, but innovation doesn’t require abandoning all traditions.
Keep Rotary traditions that are meaningful to your club, but foster an environment that allows members to raise questions about club practices.
If the only reason for a certain practice is “we’ve always done it that way,” it probably isn’t contributing to the club’s vitality.
Activities
Ask participants the following questions:
Which traditions are meaningful and which do not contribute to your club’s vitality?
What new ideas could your club try?
Have participants get into pairs and discuss some positive changes that have taken place in the club since they became members.
Have a speaker share a personal story about an innovative idea that improved everyday life.
Activity
Ask participants the following questions:
What other ideas do you have for implementation?
What concerns, if any, do you have?
For each best practice, Be a Vibrant Club offers:
Questions to ask yourself about the club
Sample ideas to try in your club
Resources to help you further explore
With the Internet and social media, there are many ways to communicate club activities, news, and events. Clubs can choose which methods to use, but they should keep the lines of communication open and establish a plan for sharing information.
Club members’ needs should be known and expressed to club leaders and, at times, to district leaders. Likewise, district initiatives should be communicated to club leaders and members.
Social media is growing in popularity and offers a great way to share information.
Activities
Ask participants the following questions:
Why do you visit your club and district websites?
What would you like to see on your club and district websites?
Pair members who are familiar with social media (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn) with a member who is not. Have them discuss the benefits of social media and the types of information shared through online social networks, as well as the logistics of creating an account.
Work together to compare your club’s current practices with each of the best practices listed in the guide.
For areas that need improvement, think of new ideas and decide how to implement them. Implementation takes time, but it is worth the effort.
Activity
Ask participants the following questions:
What other best practices should we consider?
What questions or comments do you have?
District meetings, new member orientations, ongoing educational opportunities, and leadership development programs are all components of a comprehensive training plan.
To ensure that new and current members receive training, clubs should consider appointing a club trainer or, if the club is large, a training committee.
Clubs can also conduct a skills assessment to see which skills members would like training in.
Activity
Ask participants the following questions:
What training would you like to see in our club?
What training could be abandoned, combined, or radically changed?
Regardless of your club’s committee structure, all committees should address the Avenues of Service, club vitality, member involvement, and your club’s needs.
Larger clubs might consider establishing additional committees to involve more members, and smaller clubs might consider combining committees to avoid members serving in too many roles.
Activity
Ask participants the following questions:
Is there anything about your club’s structure that isn’t working?
Are there additional committees that could be added that would help club operations?
Are there some committees that aren’t needed?
