This is a slightly different issue of the club's bulletin. As the majority of members only look at the bulletin to see if they've been allocated a duty an irresponsible author could write exactly what he wanted - so hang on for the ride!  There will be the normal deliberate (and inadvertent) spelling mistakes.

This was another  Zoom meeting as Auckland is still locked down, although now at level 3, which is the same as level 4 but with takeaways.  and might be for a little while.  It is possible, just possible, that we'll move to level 2 in two weeks time. That will mean that the meeting on October 6th will be via Zoom but, fingers crossed, we might be able to meet in person on the October 13th. So the normal range of duties have been allocated for that meeting. 

President Phil opened the meeting at 5.00 pm

 

The Speaker was introduced by Ingrid who knew him as a result of her role in reorganising the upper echelons of Rotary in Australia / NZ area.  

 

Andy Rajapakse seemed a very capable and enthusiastic fellow, a Rotarian for 25 years.  He has been District Governor in the southern Brisbane area. His district had a few very small clubs, with six or so members. He told these clubs "Grow or be closed down". There were also clubs which needed to change to reflect their changing demographic environment. He gave some case studies of these clubs and commented on our club's strategic plan. 

 

His key thrust was to carry out more projects and extendthe club's  reach, and range (good expressions from his marketing background). Clubs have to be aware of issues in their community and set out to address them, setting up task forces in the community to deal with them, being more 'agile' (to use an overused expression).

 

He used a practical example, "How long does it take a prospective member to be inducted". He then contrasted the (optimistic time frame of 4 - 6 weeks) to the time it takes to get a passport, emphasising speed, speed, speed. He added that you can get rid of failures if you make a mistake!  

 

He asked, what are the demographics in our area, to be told that 'our area' now extended over the most of Auckland, which misses the point, our name is Parnell so new members are likely to come from the area so the question was rellevent.  The talk was recorded and President Phill will tell you how you can access that recording - it is worth listening to as he had some excellent ideas. 

 

Andy described himself, " I am a catalyst. At the end of the day it's up to you".  And that leads to the elephant in the room. 

 

Many of us have created strategic plans, done the SWOT analysis, etc. Our problem is delivery. Managers are people who decide what to do and get some other bugger to do it. In some cases we've decided what to do but, with some notable exceptions,  members have not embraced the fact that as Andy said, 'it's now up to you'. 

 

If the club is to survive,  let alone grow, we personally have to do something about it. 

Now, for the two of you who've got this far, how are you going to attract more members, and make a difference in our community?

 

Phil closed the meeting at 6.14pm. 

 

Next week's speaker is Sue Hughes, a past president at Parnell and now world traveller. She was very interesting when she spoke to the club last time, a number of year, and thousands of kilometres, ago so she'll be well worth listening to - much better than the 1.00pm speech from the throne!