A Little Background

North Cobb Rotary members live and or work in Kennesaw, Acworth and Marietta Georgia, 25 miles northwest of Atlanta. Historically, membership at RCNC has ranged from 35 to 38 members. The Board made a conscious decision to increase membership, to increase the number of women and to increase the diversity of the club to more accurately reflect our community. The Board “bought in” and carried out a strategy to accomplish. It took time for the entire Club to” buy in” but now there is no going back!

We’ve added 22 new members since the Rotary year began - including nine women and 13 men and we’ve lowered the average age of the club nicely. We have actually lost seven members this year, all but one due to retirement, relocation or job relocation, so unbeknownst to us at the beginning of the year, membership growth became even more important. We’ve increased membership from 40 on July 1 to 55 on February 15. We are actively speaking with ten Potential New Members (PNM’s) and expect several of them to join in the next few months.

The enthusiasm in our weekly club meetings has increased dramatically. The energy our new members have contributed to our meetings is infectious and has caught on with all of our members. We have increased the number of mostly local organizations our club supports with our time and/or our money from 35 to over 50. So, supporting our local community which is one of the key reasons Rotarians join Rotary, is being fulfilled. There is a lot going on in our little club.

How We Did It

We are a “breakfast club” and we meet at 7:15am, so, we attract members who prefer and find it convenient to meet for breakfast. We serve an excellent breakfast with a combination of healthy and not as healthy fare. Something for everyone.

If a potential new member (PNM) is not a “morning person”, they don’t find our club appealing. Don’t waste any time attempting to convince someone they should join, knowing getting out of bed at 5:30 am or 6:00 am is not on their agenda for Thursday mornings. Know your market!

We repeatedly discuss the importance of Membership Growth with the Club. I stress repeatedly, every week. “If we had more members, we could have a bigger effect in our community.” We could do more with more members. Increasing our positive impact on the community became the key driver and source of motivation for members to increase membership, to bring PNM’s to our breakfast meeting. We also invited PNM’s to any and all the service projects and socials we do in the community during any given month.

We have a strong, supportive Club Executive Board in alignment with our Membership Goal. We installed a strong Recruitment Chair, a salesperson/business executive. Our strategy was to ask our current members to bring guests who “might be candidates to join Rotary” to breakfast or to one of our service projects. We asked our membership every week to bring a guest. We encouraged our new and long-time members to bring a guest every week in our Monday Club Newsletter. We asked each member to invite just one new PNM. A few members have invited multiple PNM’s. A few members invited their first PNM because of our focus. It helps to have a few aggressive recruiters who will invite someone almost every week. They, without realizing became part of the “Recruitment team.”

We had a project to get everyone’s picture/profile on our website along with their Professional Classification. We have an excellent social media program with multiple postings weekly about our upcoming activities, upcoming speakers, new member inductions, service activities, etc. Facebook and Instagram-an average of three postings per week. It’s easy for PNM’s to see what we are doing on our Facebook page or website.

We have an excellent speaker series as part of our Recruitment and Retention Strategy. Great speakers make it easier for our members to invite PNM’s to breakfast, provide members access to important people in our community, county and state, and keep current members informed and connected to community leaders.

We spoke to the Police Chiefs in Kennesaw and Acworth and invited them to recommend a member from their department who would commit to membership and engagement in our community. We waive certain fees for dues for Law Enforcement and we offer a “Young Professionals Rate” to encourage younger members.

Members whose values are not in alignment with club values will increase attrition, so we meet and verify individuals' values and drivers for membership to ensure alignment before encouraging them to apply for membership. This is a critical step in the process. Rotary does mean Business in North Cobb Rotary but it should not be and is not the primary driver for membership in North Cobb Rotary.

New members spurred engagement in new community projects which stimulated more PNM’s who observed what we were doing. We encourage new members to suggest an initiative or a project to the board and if the club can accommodate this “NEW” project or organization, we do it, thus increasing member involvement and engagement. Our expanded support to more than 50 community organizations was driven by new members brought organizations they support to North Cobb Rotary, looking for a support infrastructure from our club. So, for any given week, members in the club have the opportunity to participate, serve and enjoy fellowship with other members two to three times a week outside of our regular meeting.

Mentoring, Engagement and Retention

It does no good to recruit a new member if Rotary is not what they thought it would be, so align expectations before offering membership. We assign all new members a “senior member” to serve as their mentor and we “find” a project for them to engage in right away. We ensure new members to assimilate into the Club immediately. One of our long-time members coordinates our mentoring program and oversees all the activities as closely as possible to ensure no one is ignored. We publish our service projects and all activities 30 days in advance each Monday in our newsletter, so members can plan ahead and determine what they want to participate in. We support three Interact Clubs including Georgia Laws of Life and one Rotaract Club and use newer members to support, as just one way to engage new members.

Changing the Culture, Creating Enthusiasm and Providing a Mechanism to Engage the Community

We’ve established a “Culture” of Membership Growth so we can sustain our organization and Increase our Community Impact. We simply cannot throttle back our member’s recruitment efforts now. We have three to five guests at our breakfast meeting every week. Historically, we invited PNM’s to breakfast once or twice and then we collectively decided on membership. We changed our policy so that PNM’s may attend breakfast four to five times plus participate in a service project or social before applying for membership. They experience North Cobb Rotary before they decide to join us. We track our PNM’s on a “Membership PNM Forecast” and our top candidates for membership numbers ten people most of the time. Not everyone becomes a member but many do. Most self-determine, they either want to be a part of what we are doing or they don’t, either is just fine. We don’t convince anyone to join, just let them meet our members and see what we do in the community. So, the growth is organic.

There is a “Buzz and Excitement” at our meetings that did not exist before. Everyone feels welcome and we make everyone feel welcome. We have many very successful members, but we don’t have cliques, although we do have a troublemakers table that all are welcome to sit with. We register all guests and capture their contact information. Egos are left at the door and our Sergeant-at-Arms and his team wait at the door with open arms to welcome everyone. No guest is ever left alone. We are a like-minded club focused on our service activities.

Our Club meeting format is helpful to let PNM’s experience North Cobb Rotary. We introduce guests and let them say a few words about themselves. Then we do “Sunshine” so they hear about things that are special to our members. We then do “Announcements” which include updates on service projects, dinners we serve, food or lunches packed for kids, books for elementary school students we are collecting, can goods we collected, you name it. PNM’s experience the “soul of our community” in listening to all we are involved in at our weekly meeting. PNM’s then experience the Soul of our Community” as they participate in the service projects. We then introduce our featured speaker for the week and we adjourn the meeting ON TIME at 8:30am.

One of the benefits that becomes obvious to our new members is that our club membership is very well connected in our community, our county and our state. Connected in the sense that our members have relationships with the mayors, police chiefs, county commissioners, chamber of commerce executives, local business associations leadership and state government officials. Club members have an ability to help new members when they need a “connection" regardless of who or where. That’s a valuable benefit.

Some members join our club looking for support of the organization(s) they are already engaged with; some join because our club to provide opportunities for them to “give back” to the community. Either motivation works for us! Many of our members are Rotarians for Life. The membership is a group of “Friends.”

Final Thoughts

As the President of the Club, I felt that I “owned recruitment and club growth”, that it was my responsibility to be our top recruiter, so I attempted to lead by example. It caught on with several other members. We don’t have a target above the original target of 50 members, but we believe we will increase net membership from 40 to 65 this Rotary year and it will continue to grow in the future. Based on our success, we expect to finish the Rotary year with 25 net new members.

Some of our PNM’s expressed a concern about their ability to attend every breakfast meeting. Our policy is to count service project participation or engagement with an Interact Club or Rotaract club as part of attendance or a make-up, so that we took some of the pressure off of attending every breakfast meeting for members where that would be impossible.

Our club now “reflects our community” and is a true reflection of who we serve in our community. We continue to look for new ways to serve the community with a focus on youth, senior citizens, sex trafficking, opioid abuse, veterans, recovery and homelessness.

Our community is full of PNM’s. We just need to find them. The Membership Chair can’t do it on their own. All Club Members participate. It makes recruitment of new members much easier!

Have fun with recruitment. It’s great to get “new blood” in the Club!

Dave Schwickerath, Rotary Club of North Cobb President 2018-2020

678-414-0430daveschwick@gmail.com