On the St Johns Rotary Facebook page ( www.facebook.com/stjohnsrotaryclub
) President Mary Ann said “We like to
introduce our new members to the seemingly crazy nature of the club slowly so
as to not scare them off. One way we do this is to invite them all to a New
Members Night.”
These are always
incredibly relaxing and pleasant evenings and being a pot luck dinner some
unexpected cooking skills from the male members came to light. What is significant is the club is innovative
in finding better ways of achieving results and this is one example.
The whole
purpose of the evening is for new members to get to know each other better and
they all have the fact they are fairly new to the club in common. Unlike how such evenings are handled in many other
clubs where such evenings often have a formal Rotary information presentation,
this evening has none. This is because new
members get excellent information in a highly structure (but seemingly informal) way as they join,
and the friendly nature of the club and the quality of the meetings means new
members learn a lot about Rotary as they take part in these and in the frequent
and varied projects.
Of course,
it is inevitable that some conversation around Rotary opportunities arises with
the new members becoming much more comfortable that they can just get involved
within or outside the club as they choose, and some quite surprised at the
extent of what they can just go and become involved in within Rotary and depart
the evening intending to find out more through the website about a particular
aspect of Rotary that interests them. The
club has long promoted Rotary as offering members the limitless ability to
contribute to the community in a way that suits their preferences and interests
while respecting your lifestyle and commitments. Understanding this is extremely attractive to
prospective members and the club backs this by sending new members to Rotary
Leadership Institute as soon as they are able.
