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Shortly after I had attended the first provisional meeting of Surfers Sunrise in December 1986, I couldn't resist the urge to call my "most cosmopolitan" sister to tell her I'd joined Rotary (I was 41 at the time). Her immediate reply: "Why would you join a bunch of old fuddy-duddies like Rotary??" That was the perception of Rotary in the general public at the time. Regrettably, it seems, not much has changed in he following 30 years. Rotary still is at best an unknown quantity for most of the general public and, if somebody indeed knows more about us, the recognition is in relation to a bunch of generally elderly people sizzling sausages at Bunnings. In short: we know what we are all about. We know that Rotary does a lot of good in the world and has done so for over 100 years, but we are not very good at telling our story. Well, now we have tools to tell our story. For example, there are a couple of videos which you can forward to your prospective member. In particular 'Rotary - Making a World of Difference' is superb. Click on this link to download it. Enter Rotary's new Public Relations Campaign, based on the slogan "Rotary: People of Action". I had the pleasure of
attending a very well structured District Training Seminar dealing with this very subject, and, indeed, this might be the first time that I am positive that this will actually work. One of my pet sayings (Ok, you are right: "whinges" is better) is that Rotary, on both a District as well as International level, should be run more like a major corporation. Well, here you have it: just like buying into a franchise! Except that it is free. It's not just the slogan; there is a lot of additional material available for the "everyday" Rotarian to download. They are superbly well done, very professional indeed. They don't just give a brief about Rotary, they do pull some of the "emotion" strings. Then there are lots of ready made templates: templates for pull-up banners, templates for Facebook pages. head over to the Download section on the right. You will find a copy of my PowerPoint presentation (which does not include the videos) and the banners separately.
Go on! Do it now. Then think of a couple of people whom you know would be interested and send them the link to the video: Here it is in full for you to copy and paste into your email: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubqc7_MnBeE