Is your Rotary club making an impact in your community? Whether your answer is yes or no, the impact your club is, or is not, making is probably having a similar impact on your club's membership.
Clubs will have the greatest
impact on their community if they can start or change something that will, in
itself, cause further changes - be the snowball that creates an avalanche. Rotary International's Polio Eradication
project is a wonderful example. Two
Rotarians, both doctors, with a grant from The Rotary Foundation, impacted
their community by eliminating polio, creating an avalanche that evolved into
Rotary International's worldwide effort to eliminate polio. The Rotary club of Elyria , Ohio
created an avalanche when it helped Daddy Allen start a hospital for crippled
children which evolved into the Ohio Crippled Children's Society then to Easter
Seals.
The art is for clubs to search their communities and find areas where they can cause a tipping point like Philippine Rotarians and Daddy Allen did. They had no idea they were creating avalanches. They only wanted to make an impact in their community. To make an impact takes vision, effort, practice, and experience to find a local cause that may create local change. They exist in all communities, waiting to be discovered.
The art is for clubs to search their communities and find areas where they can cause a tipping point like Philippine Rotarians and Daddy Allen did. They had no idea they were creating avalanches. They only wanted to make an impact in their community. To make an impact takes vision, effort, practice, and experience to find a local cause that may create local change. They exist in all communities, waiting to be discovered.
Without a doubt, clubs should not
try to be all things to all people - be they beneficiaries or members. If they do, they will lose out on
opportunities to make greater, longer lasting impacts, and that impacts
membership.
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