We all must be change agents for Rotary?

RI Director Stuart Heal

The board of Directors of Rotary International met immediately after the International Assembly in San Diego in January. The material discussed was very wide ranging and in my opinion we are seeing the influence of the new General Secretary in asking the board to address the key strategic issues. The board is very process driven and does handle a lot of decisions that in my view should be made by staff or a committee structure....however that is just my view.

The brand revitalisation exercise has commenced and an interim report from consultants Siegel and Gale was presented to a combined meeting of the board and trustees. They revealed the results of their extensive research and, for the first time for many of us, what had been anecdotal before was now real. Among many findings they concluded if you ask 10 people what Rotary stands for you will probably get 10 different answers. We are perhaps our own biggest impediment. There is a long way to go with this exercise but it will challenge our traditional thinkers.

In preparing for this meeting where I was requesting a pilot be established to look at revitalising the District structure in New Zealand and Australia, I was very disturbed to have confirmed that our membership in Australia has declined by 5,000 members in the decade ended 2011 (almost 14%) and 1,400 in New Zealand (13%) meaning we have 41,400 members now and in the year 2000 we had 47,800. Were that trend to continue I reckon we have, at best, another decade before we become perhaps dysfunctional but certainly irrelevant in our communities. We need to address this and start now. The board has asked for a regional three-year membership plan for each of our countries and they supported the pilot to look at our District structure. We now have 13 of our 28 districts very close to the point where the board may force merging. Once districts get to 1200 members the board may act. We have 13 districts with fewer than 1400 members and if you apply the membership trend from the last decade you can see change is inevitable. The current Governors have recognised this and a task force has been established. Without even second guessing what they may come up with the challenge will be to change tradition and challenge history. Parochialism and history may need to move aside to ensure survival.

The other big issue is the launch of Future Vision in July 2013. I was back to Evanston early February to attend a Future Vision meeting and had plenty of discussion topics raised by clubs and districts around the zone. The transition has been difficult particularly where we had established relationships between districts and only one became a pilot district. Maybe the pilot was a little internally focused and forgot about the recipients of our work. However it is a pilot and things can and will still change. Group Study Exchange is another programme to be reevaluated at this meeting.

So my conclusion is that changes are happening and yes we do have some major issues to deal with. I note with pride we have achieved our goal of raising $200,000,000 as part of our commitment to eradicating polio and closer to home, a club in my district with about 40 members, just raised $31,000 for the local hospice. Rotarians get it done....... despite ourselves !