Facing the New Dawn Challenges

It was all business at the club assembly on Saturday, called specifically to address club issues, most importantly the more streamlined integration of new members into club structures.

The mediator for the day, Grant Daly, a past district governor of D9400, under whose auspices New Dawn falls, started off by saying that New Dawn is now the second largest club in the district with more than 50 members.

    Grant Daly and the assembled members

He said that with the rapid recent growth, there are bound to be growing pains, especially because the club is barely 15 years old. Recent growth has added greatly to New Dawn's diversity in terms of race and to a lesser extent gender and age.

One of the challenges is that newer members don't fully realise that the Rotary International culture is all about membership and is very people-centric as opposed to being results driven. Rotary exists because of the Rotarian and because of the club, not because of Rotary International.

    President Mbali Zulu hands Grant Daly a voucher as a token of appreciation after the session

Rotary is not a hierarchy, he said, it is flipped upside down with the clubs being paramount and district, zones and regions being administrative tools, much as RI itself.

Without the members and clubs there is no service.

Some 25 members attended the assembly, just on half of the club. About the same percentage of members filled out the short online survey that formed the basis of the assembly.

            Fellowship after the hard work with Paul Channon, Joan Donet, Julian Nagy and Helene Bramwell

The main finding of this incomplete sample of people was that about a third of members are not entirely happy or for the glass half full crowd, that two thirds of members are mainly happy with the way things are done and are going.

PDG Grant said the survey was aimed at ways to enhance the club experience. From conflict, he said, comes solutions.

              Nyami Khanyile and Zena Kimaro in a relaxed mode

The most important four messages to take out of the assembly, he said, are:

1. Tweaking the structure of the club: an example of this would be that during every presidency there is a president, the immediate past president, a president-elect to follow the president and at the latest by December of each year, a nominee president for the year after that.

For this to work, the club needs multiple volunteers for president, so start putting up your hands. The alternative is stagnancy.

2. Mentorship of new members. He emphasised that the best mentor is the person who introduced the new member in the first place.

                     PDG Grant Daly and PDG Jankees Sligcher

3. Strategic planning in terms of the scope and number of signature projects and forging a shared vision; also gaining consensus on how and on what club funds should be spent every year. This also includes the public image of the club, an important tool in raising funds.

4. Membership enhancement, he said, is very important in making members feel they are contributing something real. He included setting up a Rotary Community Corps under this point, knowing that New Dawn is very interested in the opportunities in Soweto.

The next step is to summarise the findings of the survey, put into action as many of the necessary steps as possible and as soon as possible so that New Dawn can live up to its name of being a New Dawn in Rotary.

For that to happen, more people are going to have to put up their hands to help in running the club. Without that, we don't have a club.

This Week: It's a business meeting on Wednesday where the main points of discussion will be Donate a Loo, The Link and feedback from the education committee.

A Thought for the Week: A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did. - John Burroughs (1837 - 1921)