Club Forum Wednesday 15 November 2023

There are currently 54 members after allowing for some departures and for some new members: President Tony wants to get to a total of 60. Click here also for Secretary Jo's notes.

 

Membership, he said, was “not a problem as long as we don’t get lazy.”

There was discussion about the need to both constantly recruit new members and to ensure that current members were constructively engaged in club activities and projects. David Barnes said that ideally everyone should be involved with a project which engages them.

The cost of membership was mentioned but not discussed further.

On the question of our chosen charities, President Tony said the club had helped organisations big and small, but our help was more important to the smaller causes than to the big ones. The need to have a balance of large publicly appealing charities and smaller worthy causes was noted by several speakers. 

 

Rick Hughes said that the auction had worked very well for the club over a long period and if it were to be scrapped a replacement would need to raise a similar amount of cash.

One suggestion was that members offer their service to causes we are supporting – help in kind not necessarily just cash. Another was to partner with other clubs or organisations to jointly raise money for a cause.

President Tony said the club was working hard on its public image and there was to a large high profile event for young people in February 2024 which would profile Rotary’s involvement in mental health.

 

The idea of holding the auction every second year with another activity or activities in the other year was raised by Tony. Bill Day noted that for the auction to be successful we needed big rollers to buy tables and bid for auction items.

Finally, there was general satisfaction about meeting times and the venue.

 

John Bishop

Club Reporter