Is your "Elevator Speech" ready?

One of the key aspects of membership development is getting prospective new members interested. Often we stumble into an opportunity when someone asks us: "What is Rotary?" (Maybe they saw that pin that you always wear so proudly.) When the opportunity arises, it is very important to have a short, succinct, and accurate answer to this proverbial question. The answer must also include our personal "Why" of Rotary membership.

Often, caught unprepared, we may expound on the internationality of Rotary, the size and scope of our service, or that we meet every week and eat together. None of these are particularly good at catching someone's interest in 15 to 30 seconds. So, first ask yourself: why did you join and what keeps you coming back? If you are like many Rotarians, the two most cited reasons that people join are for the networking and friendship, and to make their LOCAL communities a better place for all. About 75% of Rotarians joined (and stay) for these reasons.

Rotarian Michael Angelo Caruso

Jim Henry, a Rotarian from Florida, says that your response must address your club's "target audience" of business, professional, and community leaders. If they are in one of these categories, your club would most likely benefit from their membership. So, what is Rotary?  Henry's approach would be to answer: "Rotary is a network of active and retired business, professional, and community leaders, committed to making our community a better place to live." If the person who is asking is an active or retired business, professional or community leader who cares about your community, they will probably ask for more information.

Rotarian Michael Angelo Caruso customizes his "elevator speech" for specific target audiences. He simply
says: "Rotary is the best decision I ever made!" That certainly will spark interest in almost anyone. Play the video below for more from Michael on his intriguing "elevator speech".

So, the key points are to prepare yourself, think of your "target audience", and be ready to respond in a way that will stimulate further interest and discussion when the right person asks you: "So what is Rotary, anyway?" There is nothing worse than to have someone ask and your response is: "ummmmm..."

That's All!

Woody

Engage Your New Members

Engagement is the key to developing and retaining great Rotary members. Engagement shows them you care, and helps them build a habit of participation with you and your club. It really is the glue of retention!

Engagement is the key to growing great Rotarians and future
club leaders.

There is a new tool that DG Vicki has put together for your use on our website. There are a total of 12 letters all written and ready for you to fill in the blanks and customize. The letters are intended to engage and help orient new members. They are designed to be mailed to a new member weekly (or whatever interval you decide) to help inform and welcome them to your Rotary club, based on the belief that new Rotarians benefit from understanding the basic tenants of Rotary, as well as specific information about your club. This is a fabulous tool! Imagine how your recently inducted member will feel about your club after receiving these letters. You can get your club secretary involved to help you, or appoint a member of your committee to
accomplish this important task. Here is the first one as an example:

Dear new member:

Congratulations on your acceptance to membership in the Rotary Club of Downtown Metro.  It is with great pleasure that every member of our Club welcomes you to this Rotary Club and to our International Organization.

This is the first in a series of twelve letters that you will receive weekly to convey important elements concerning Rotary, its purpose and mission.  We ask that you give careful attention in your reading of the letters to help you understand more about Rotary and to assist you in engaging in the activities of our Club and Organization.

You have been invited to membership because your Sponsor recognized you as a person of good character and reputation, a leader in your profession. a leader in the community and saw in you the “heart of service”.  Although you have been invited to join Rotary, it will be through your own actions that you become a Rotarian—a term that means much more than just being a member of a Rotary club.

The first thing we ask is that you attend the Club meetings each week.  In this way, you will have the best opportunity to meet the other Club members and learn about the activities of our Club.  Each of our members will make an effort to make you feel welcome, will to get to know you and then we ask that you also do your part.  Plan to participate in the weekly meetings as a greeter so that you can become familiar with the other members.  Sit at different tables each week to enhance your exposure to more members.  Volunteer to sell raffle tickets at the door, or to take notes for the weekly newsletter.

There is no probationary period in Rotary.  You are a Rotarian, just like every other Rotarian in our Club or in the world.  First names are the custom that denotes we are all equals in Rotary.  Reach out your hand in friendship to all the other members and introduce yourself.  The members will be interested in learning about you, your profession, your family and your hobbies. Through this interaction, you will also get to know each of our members.

Personal acquaintance and friendship are the cornerstones of Rotary and attendance at each meeting is very important to our Organization.  Rotary meetings are held each week and you are expected to attend at least 50% of the time.  Greater attendance is encouraged because the absence of any member deprives the Club of the value of our diversified membership, contributions of all members to ongoing club projects and the personal fellowship of each member.  You will find that you miss a lot when you miss one of our meetings!

Please speak to me, or to any of the other Rotarians in our Club, with any questions.  I look forward to seeing you at this week’s meeting.

Yours in Rotary Service,

Club President

Think of the impact that receiving these letters would have had on you when you first joined! Make sure you customize them to fit your club, and start engaging your new members right away.

You can download copies of these letters from our membership development section of the district website, or at the following link:

12 Letters

That's All!

Woody

Retention: How is your club doing?

Retention is a word we all hear when discussing Rotary membership. I thought I understood what it meant until I was tasked with calculating it for my club. Most of us understand that the "retention rate" is essentially the percentage of club members who stay in the club (as opposed to terminating their membership). However there are several questions and assumptions that must be made before you can do any calculating.

• What time period are you going to use?
• Do you want to know the percentage of  "new members" that stay with the club?
• How about the percentage of existing members that hang in there?
• Why should we care?

I'll start with the last question first: why should we care? When I was club President in 2001, Rotary touted 1.2 million members in round numbers. Today, we are still at 1.2 million members world wide. However, it may surprise you that over that period we inducted about 1.2 million new members! So, 1.2 million members left Rotary over that time frame! We had essentially ZERO growth even though we added over a million members world wide. So, getting people to join is something we are pretty good at, but we are losing members as fast as we can replace them.

Family friendly meetings and events can really improve
retention rates!

In District 5190, we have lost over 1,600 members since July 1, 2008. That means that the equivalent of 63% of our current membership has left the Rotary fold over the last 5 years. The story is similar (and sometimes worse) for many clubs.

But retention is the percentage of members who STAY over a given period of time. So we must first set the time we want to evaluate. It's a good idea to use more than just one year so you can get a feel for what is happening in the club. RI recommends using 3 to 5 years of data.

Besides the time period, it is useful to understand how well your club retains new members versus existing members. This is because there may be different reasons influencing these two rates of retention. Figuring out the existing member retention rate is straight forward. Your starting number is the existing membership at the start, your ending number is the number of those same members who are still in the club. You divide the remaining (retained) members by your start number, and multiply by 100 to convert to a percentage.

Here's an example of a Retention Model that gives valuable
information about your club.

Let's say we start with 27 members, and 8 leave the club. That leaves 19 of the original members still chowing down lunch on Thursdays. Nineteen divided by 27 times 100 equals 70 percent. That is your existing member retention rate.

The math is the same for new members. However your starting number is the total number of inductees during the period in question. You subtract the number of new members who didn't make it through the period before they drifted away, then divide by the start number. 

So, let's say that during the same period, we inducted a total of 5 new members, but 2 of them just didn't seem to "take". That leaves only 3 of the new members in the club. Divide 3 by the 5 total inductees and multiply by 100 to get a retention rate of 60 percent.

You will be surprised to look at your club's data. By examining this information you can assist in putting together a plan that will help address the problem in your club. To make it easy for you, your club's data for the period July 1, 2010 to July 1, 2013 can be found by clicking on the following link: 

District 5190 Club Retention Data 

Also, to assist you in evaluating your club's retention rates, a blank "Retention Model" form similar to the illustration above, can be accessed at the following link:

Retention Model Form

Finally, some additional historical information about your club's membership over this same time period can be found here:

3 Year Club Membership History

With this information you can perform a valuable service to your club. Look it over, make the calculations and share the information with your board. Brainstorm ideas to address retention issues. We need to increase our rates of retention significantly (let's shoot for 85% or above in both categories!) if we are to grow Rotary so that it we can do even more good in our communities, and the world!

That's All!

Woody