How to identify your club’s membership problem

Members of the Rotary Club of James River, Rich-
mond, Virginia, USA.

By Richard Cunningham, Rotary Club of James River,
Richmond, Virginia, USA

My club is a relatively young club (10 years) and
does not carry some of the baggage older clubs do,
although we certainly have had our problems. The
club had dwindled down to just four members at
one point before I transferred into it in 2012.

Near the end of 2012, a small team embarked on a
structured and planned process of cultural change.
Under the umbrella of “Service-Centered Leadership,”
we have been able to achieve some amazing results.
The club has grown to 24 members and is on its way to
stabilizing at 40 active members, at which time we will
look to seed another club.

What is the secret of our success? We take a strategic,
not tactical approach. Our core membership message mir-
rors RI President John Germ’s recipe for growth: engage
members in community activities. We have dynamic pro-
jects in both basic education and literacy, and maternal
and child health. Every one of our last five new members
has a connection with either the medical field or education,
or both. One new member was a transfer, who switched
because their previous club was not involved in any major
projects. We have also reached out to the recently retired;
two of our newest members just retired this year.

I say all this not to brag, but to share what can be achiev-
ed with a vision, a plan, high volunteer expectations, and
a solid, sustained team effort. Almost every member of
our club is engaged. We do not settle for less in a new
member, and have been committed to this approach for
three years now.

We’ve shared our message at zone meetings and in discus-
sion forums. When coaching leaders how to help a club
with membership issues, we always advise they first take
a hard look at what they are dealing with. The first step to
problem-solving is always identifying the real problem.
We’ve often found it to be one or more of the following:

• A deeper root problem. In almost all cases, there
  are several other areas of club operations and leader-
  ship that aren’t going well. Declining membership is
  usually the symptom of a deeper dysfunction, not
  the root problem.
• Lack of a sustainable strategy. These are clubs
  with few plans for keeping a pipeline of future leaders.
  They may be led by a group of mostly inexperienced
  Rotarians with less than three years in Rotary, or by
  a highly experienced group who like the prestige of
  leadership but have long since lost their passion for
  steadily improving the club.
• Mired in status quo. The club may have been dys-
  functional so long that the leadership team has no
  experience of a vibrant club. All they have seen is the
  current state and they don’t actually know what
  “good” looks like.
• Lack of knowledge. The leadership team has never
  honestly diagnosed the problem. They have a lot of
  guesses, but no facts. It could be retention, a lack of
  prospects, an inability to close the deal on prospects,
  lack of curb appeal, the existence of “toxic” members,
  or something else.
• Lack of history. The leadership team doesn’t have a
  sense of the club’s membership trends. They don’t
  know how many members have joined or resigned
  in the past decade, or seen any patterns in the club’s membership.

The first step to addressing your club’s membership prob-
lem, or helping another club, is to do some fact finding.
Pull whatever membership history is available and see
what it tells you. Even if it doesn’t provide answers, it
should tell you the questions you need to be asking as
you engage your club in solving the problem.

Armed with facts, or at least questions, you can begin
to develop intentional strategies to create a culture of
membership growth.