DISCURSOS - Rotary International

you can’t just let slide. Because someone’s counting on you to do it, whether it’s booking the
venue for the meetings or ordering the books for the dictionary project or getting the financials
together to apply for a Foundation grant.
When you have a job, you have a commitment.
When you’re doing something meaningful in Rotary, Rotary is meaningful to you.
So the first part is asking people to join. The second part is giving them a reason to stay. And
there’s one more thing that I think we need to be doing — and that’s taking a clear look, with an
open mind, about what we can do to make all of our members more welcome.
We talk so much about attracting members to Rotary, but we don’t talk enough about keeping
them there. And we need to be doing that — talking about understanding the real obstacles
to Rotary membership and about what we can do to make being a Rotarian a viable choice for
people of all ages.
I think it’s fair to say that most of us here are past that stage — we’re Rotarians, we’ve made the
commitment. We’re established in our careers, or we’re retired. Our kids may be grown; many of
us have grandkids. And we love Rotary just the way it is.
But Rotary isn’t just about us. If we believe in Rotary, if we really believe that the world is better
off with Rotary in it, then we have a responsibility to make sure that Rotary stays around long
after we’re gone. If we don’t want Rotary to end with us, we can’t act like it already does.
There are plenty of young people, some of them former Rotaractors, who join Rotary. But when
they start having families, many of them leave, because if you’re talking about young professionals
with families, you’re talking about mothers and fathers who are already spending a lot of time
away from their kids. And even if they really love Rotary, they are not going to prioritize Rotary
over their families — nor should that be the expectation.
When we talk about the family of Rotary, it can’t just be lip service. We need to find ways to
really, genuinely welcome families into Rotary. And there are so many ways — real, practical
ways — that we can do this.
There are clubs that actually encourage members with small children to bring them along, and
they do it very well. The Rotary Club of Fremont in Seattle has a room set aside every week for
the kids. The members who bring kids pay $5 each, there’s a babysitter there, the kids start the
meeting, they leave while the meeting’s running, and they come back in at the end to ring the
bell. Once a month, there’s a service project that welcomes kids.
When you welcome families into Rotary, your family is not an obstacle to your Rotary service.
The family of Rotary is real. The children in those families will grow up seeing their parents involved
in community service, they’ll grow up involved in service themselves, and I think that is
a win-win situation. And you know what else? I think it’s a pretty good bet that 20 or 30 years
down the road, there’s going to be a new generation of Rotarians in that club.
No, children can’t come along to everything, and everyone knows that. And every Rotary club
must make its own decisions. Not every Rotary club is going to want to have babysitting, not
every Rotary club is OK with members bringing kids along. But maybe that means it might be
time to start a new club, so that people can bring Rotary into their lives the way it works for
them, at their stage in life.
Bringing kids along to Rotary isn’t new. It’s not some revolutionary idea that just started. When I
was district governor, and you already know how long ago that was, I didn’t just bring Jetta along
on club visits; we brought our kids. Ronna and Josh were 14 and 10 years old at the time. We
always asked if they were welcome, and we always offered to pay for their meals. It was never
60 International Assembly Speeches 2013