While their initiatives are similar, the reasons that two clubs in our District have chosen to publish profiles of their members are different.
Each has a different audience in mind and so each approaches how they publish differently. The target for the Rotary E-Club of Canada One is its own members, while the Rotary Club of St. Albert has crafted it messages with an external audience in mind.
For the E-Club, publishing short member biographies in its weekly bulletin addresses the challenge of members getting to know each other when some have never met in person, even pre-pandemic.
“We aren’t like terra clubs,” says E-Club president Tammy Waugh who lives in Red Deer, but has spent much of the year with her daughter in Nova Scotia. “Some of our members have never met in person and don’t know a lot about each other.”
Other E-club members live in the United Kingdom, Europe, Mexico, the United States, the Caribbean and across Canada.
In the fall, Tammy asked Rotarians to send her their “member moments.”
“What were the things that have inspired you to be a Rotarian? Was it a particular incident? Or was simply because a friend brought you to the club?”
Of the 24 people who received the email, Tammy received 19 responses containing member moments. She decided we would feature one each week in the bulletin.
The biographies have been well received. “I have received some great feedback,” Tammy says. “It makes members feel connected. It gives us something to talk about at our coffee chats on Thursday mornings.”
Now that nearly every member has been profiled once, Tammy plans to start over with additional information about members. They may be asked to explain how they maintain perfect attendance and why that’s important to them. Or they could talk about The Rotary Foundation.
“Our donations to the Foundation have been among the top three or four every year in the District, which is remarkable for a small club,” Tammy says. “We will focus on why people give to the Foundation. We all hear why we should give to the Foundation but we don’t often hear the reasons people have chosen to give.”
The St. Albert club hopes to change how community members see Rotary and prompt them to consider becoming involved.
“In our community, there was this perception that people looked at Rotary as ‘pale, male and stale,’” says president Mark Dixon. “What we wanted to do was to address this and adjust the perception that we were a privileged group and we gave money to things because we were well off.”
The club’s campaign kicked off with a half-page newspaper advertisement in July that introduced members of the 2020-2021 board and included a screen shot taken during a board meeting.
“When I built the board for this current year, I intentionally focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and you can really see that in the image,” Mark says. “There is real diversity in our board in backgrounds, experience, age, ethnicity, male/female. I am very proud of that.”
In addition to appearing in the newspaper, the advertisement was shared on various social media platforms.
“We expanded our social media platforms this year to include Instagram because Rotaractors are very active on Instagram, but we also have Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We are consistent in sending out to all four platforms anything we post, especially the campaign,” Mark says.
The initial advertisement was followed up with a series of ads focused on individual members who explain why they became Rotarians.
“We are hoping that as these members are profiled that individuals in the community will say, ‘Hey, you know I had never thought of Rotary in that way. If they are in Rotary, I could see myself in Rotary,’” Mark says.
“Maybe they will make that connection, but at the very least if they see us reaching out to support a cause or raising funds for the food bank or Tools For School, they will say, ‘Hey that is a great group. They have some resources but I want to support them because now I understand them better.’”
The club is continuing with the campaign and Mark expects to profile about 10 of its 65 members, which he feels will be representative of the club.
“Club members share the profiles with others in their networks. We are getting lots of leverage out of the campaign,” he says.
Rotary International District 5370 News 