Membership Action Plan Workshop
This is just a reminder on August 9 by popular demand there will be a repeat of the 25 May workshop for the Membership action plan in Rothwell on the North end of Brisbane, and that registrations will be closing soon.
Anyone who attended the 25 May workshop does not need to attend this one - the content is the same.
It is hard for me to stress enough that the biggest issue facing Rotary today is its dwindling membership. The territory currently convered by District 9620 has declined in membership by more than 10% in the last 4 years.
To stay and reverse this trend, Rotary district 9790 in Victoria has inplmented a program aimed at revitalising Rotary Clubs and helping them to be more attractive both to their target market of prospective members to enhance recruitment and to their current members to enhance member retention. Clubs participating in this program have almost all increased their membership with an average increase in excess of 10% and feedback has shown a higher level of member satisfaction within the clubs.
The plan involves an initial workshop followed by a a plan of simple, actionable and measurable steps that clubs can take, along with ongoing support for implementation. The plan is fully aligned with the Rotary International Action Plan to Increase our imact, Expand our reach, Enhance participant engagement and Increase our ability to adapt. For more details on this, you can go to: https://my.rotary.org/en/who-we-are/about-rotary/action-plan
In a month's time we intend to kick off the rollout of a couple more key tools that clubs can use to implement the action plan, but the first step is to get with the plan, and that is to attend the workshop. This workshop is certainly a must-attend for membership chairs, but it well worthwhile for anybody in your club to attend. Attendance by at least one member of your club is a prerequisite for taking part in the follow-up activities in the Membership Action Plan.
Rotary Leadership Institute is running August 31 and September 14 at Bostock House
RLI convener Jitendra Prasad is intending to run RLI at least three times during this Rotary year and the first instance will be held over 2 days on August 31 and September 14.
RLI, despite its name, is for all Rotarians inluding new members. In fact, I attended an RLI workshop when I had only been a Rotarian for a few months and it was a wonderful introduction to Rotary's programs, procedures, entities and values that seemed more like “Rotary 101” than a leadership seminar to me. But of course we cannot become good leaders without solid organisational knowledge, and in order to use the material we must use the official name.
Cost of the seminar is $50 per attendee and traditionally many clubs have sponsored attendance by their members - particularly new members - because it s great member orientation.
You can register here: https://rotary9620.org/events/rotary-leadership-institute-2025-1/ and I also attach a flyer for the event. Please pass this opportunity on to yuor members.
WRIT1999 Effective Thinking and Writing Program at UQ: Jan 12-16, 2026
I first met Professor Deb Brown from the UQ school of Philosophy about three years ago when she talked about the UQ Critical Thinking project at my club. In her talk, she introduced us to WRIT1999 which is a part of the project, and offers students completing year 11 a wonderful opportunity to increase their skills in crititical thinking, reading and writing. There are strong statistics showing that attending this free course improves students' performance both in year 12 and in later tertiary studies.
The course is free, but of course travel and accommodation is not. As a result, from the 100 attendees in 2023, fewer than 10 were from outside the greater Brisbane area. Regional students are obviously disadvantaged when it comes to attendance at this worthy programme.
Because of this, we have a new youth programme in the district.
Rotary clubs are asked to:
- Identify and select worthy regional applicants;
- help them through the application process, including perhaps liaising with their schools; and
- sponsor their travel and accommodation expenses by sending funds drectly to The University of Queensland and notifying them which applicant the funds should be directed to.
For more information contact Bruce Jones at writ1999@rotary9620.org . I also attach a draft flyer for the programme that will be updated shortly but already contains most of the relevant information. This is a new programme and details are still being finallised, but January is not that far off, and this will help you with your planning.
DG 2025-2026