At our May 3rd club meeting we had small group discussions to gain more qualitative insight on the club survey results. As indicated earlier, our club survey results were overall very positive. Based on lower scores or consistent themes in the written comments, there were 4 areas that we chose for discussion: members not inviting people to join our club, the types and amount of fundraising our club does, the lack of community service projects, and our club’s pace of change. Here are some themes from the survey and/or the small group discussions:
- We have too many check writing “fundraisers”; we need another signature fundraiser like the golf outing. When our club was formed, it was to be about service, not just writing checks.
- We want a better understanding of how we spend our fundraising dollars. There is also some confusion about our club foundation and the Rotary Foundation.
- We want more service projects; especially one that occurs on a monthly cadence and at night to meet the needs of people who can't get away during the day.
- We don’t know how to ask people when inviting them to a club meeting; maybe a need for training/materials
Next step...I would like to review our existing committees, have every member sign up for a committee and leverage some of our club meetings for committee meetings. I would like our committees to have goals they are working towards and all members engaged. Several of our committees are committees of 1 and for those, I’d like to get other people to join the committee. The thought process is that active committees will lead to more engaged club members, increased member retention and eventually more members joining our club. In the near future, I will get a sign-up sheet for all of our members to choose a committee. As for committee meetings, starting in July, I have asked our speaker committee to allow 1 meeting a month for committee meetings or other club topics we feel we need to have. The monthly cadence may change to quarterly or something else but we will figure that out as we go; we just need to start and we can adjust as we feel necessary. We will try some new ideas; some will be great and others may need to be modified. Please keep providing your ideas/input within the committees and provide feedback along the way. I am looking forward to seeing the progress we make in addressing the feedback from the club survey.