Cive Purt & Wayne Milnes
To start, Wayne gave us a brief summary of his background with Rotary. He joined Rotary in July, 2005. His first club was Safety Bay. As he was a bank manager, he was a natural to be asked as club treasurer. But Wayne has never served within Rotary as a treasurer. Instead, within three months, he became president elect. He enjoyed a great nine months of training.
However, the club closed when it was down to seven members, so he moved to Rockingham Rotary. But that club finished too and then the district was closed as well.
This did not daunt Wayne, who stayed with Rotary and became secretary to the District Governor. He was District Governor from 2019-20. He learnt very early that Rotarians don’t say no.
Wayne is currently the lead of new member development for Rotary South Pacific.
He addressed the question: “how do we retain members?”. We lose 30-40 per cent of new Rotarians in the first two years. There are 1.2 million Rotarians worldwide but we lose several hundred thousand a year. That is 10 per cent per year.
Rotary South Pacific has a new focus and is now more streamlined and dynamic. In the first two years of its formation, there was insufficient structure and communication. Now its theme is that we are all one together. South Pacific is the governing body but each club has its own identity and its own achievements.
Club websites are important and all Rotary websites have been checked and ranked. We are in the top 20.
Key initiatives are fellowship, communication and engagement. Rotary can be something to somebody, we don’t have to try to be everything to everyone.
The way to retain new members is to get them involved and appoint a mentor. (We can definitely confirm that this is the case with Applecross).
All districts are currently challenged to recruit new members, retain membership and open two new clubs.
The new clubs don’t have to be standard weekly meetings – they can be satellite, companion or corporate clubs. They are members of the main Rotary club in the area but are not obliged to come to meetings. A representative from the main club can attend, mentor and offer volunteer opportunities. The main club also handles all administration.
Satellite clubs can meet once a month, at the workplace or in a pub. They should appeal to younger age groups, most of whom would be working. A natural transition would be to move into a more formal setting with the parent club as time goes by.
We must promote Rotary and dispel the notion of “male, pale and stale”.
There were questions from Graeme, Kenn and Margaret about Wayne’s excellent presentation. He has given us a lot to think about.