New Member Recruitment Campaign 2009/10

Click here to go straight to the New Member Recruitment Campaign page.

We're less than three weeks away from Conference in Edinburgh and one day before Assembly starts, so the Marketing & Communications Department at RIBI has been working flat out in preparation for those key highlights of the Rotary year.

We've also been working hard on developing the Marketing Strategy that will help achieve the organisation's 'corporate' objectives. Vital to this has been to ensure that all marketing activities have and deliver specific objectives. Just 'promoting Rotary' is not sufficient - when we communicate with 'the public', in whatever format - leaflets, posters, advertising, public relations, Roadshows, websites, etc - we must try to achieve objectives.

And what are our objectives? Well, why else would we communicate with the public other than to get them to join or to donate to The Rotary Foundation? Yes, we want to promote a professional image; yes we want to increase awareness of Rotary... but what for? To increase our membership or to raise more money to help deliver Service.

So I'd ask you all, the next time you look at items that your club uses to talk to the 'outside world', ask yourself these questions as if you were a non-Rotarian...

1) Does it talk to you in YOUR language or in Rotarian-speak?

2) Does it ask you clearly either to join Rotary or to donate money?

3) Does it explain clearly HOW you can do either and what you should do next?

Increasing membership is an absolutely vital requirement - particularly attracting 'younger' members. 85% of RIBI membership's members are aged over 55 years old. Nothing wrong with that - this is the generation that has made Rotary the great organisation what it is today, has saved millions of lives and continues to work tirelessly to help those less fortunate in their own communities and those around the world. And these are the people I speak to every day and who inspire and energise me!

However, with only 15% of Rotarians aged under 55, we desparately need to attract men and women in this younger age group of business and professional people - like Rotarian Nick Baxter pictured at the top of this page, at a recent social fundraising event. Nick is 35, a former professional rugby player who, as well as working long hours to build up his wine merchant business, gets enormous pleasure from being involved in a range of Rotary projects. He's a truly inspirational guy!

How do we attract more great people like Nick into Rotary? Well, as well as the Member Get Member initiative, we need to do exactly the same as other commercial organisations do to generate their new 'business' or revenue. We need to advertise to get people like him to come to us!

Nick and a number of other fantastic Rotarians will feature in our new member 'tool kit' of materials - DVDs, audio CDs, leaflets, posters, pull-ups and advertising materials - available to all clubs and districts within the next few weeks from the Shop (we'll let you know when!), which will be launched at Edinburgh.

To find out about the proposed New Member Recruitment Campaign, which needs your vote (if you're a Voting delegate) at Edinburgh, click through to this page.

 

David Bryant
Head of Marketing & Communications