DISCURSOS - Rotary International
DISCURSOS - Rotary International
DISCURSOS - Rotary International
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helping your clubs through that transition is part of your job. With the help of your district <strong>Rotary</strong><br />
Foundation chair, you will help your clubs understand Future Vision, benefit from the changes, and<br />
do the most they can with their resources to effect positive change in our world.<br />
In my home state of Oklahoma, if you meet someone who’s a big talker, you might tell him to<br />
put his money where his mouth is. Well, I’m a big talker about our <strong>Rotary</strong> Foundation, and I put<br />
my money where my mouth is — because I believe that the Foundation should be the charity of<br />
choice for every Rotarian, and even more so for every <strong>Rotary</strong> officer. If you’re going to ask other<br />
people to donate, you need to be donating yourself. It’s called “leading by example.” And that’s<br />
why, before this assembly, I asked every one of you to make a donation in your own name to The<br />
<strong>Rotary</strong> Foundation. I’m proud to announce that every one of you did — as well as every RI Board<br />
member and every Foundation Trustee. Together, we raised US$675,000.<br />
Now, I have to believe that some of this is money that The <strong>Rotary</strong> Foundation probably would not<br />
have received had I not asked. And I think that this is an important lesson for each of us here today:<br />
if you want somebody else to do something, you can just sit around and wait for them to get<br />
the idea, or you can ask. Doesn’t it make a lot more sense to just ask?<br />
When I was in high school, I was a very active member of the Key Club. You probably all know<br />
that Key Club is not a youth program of <strong>Rotary</strong> <strong>International</strong>. It’s a youth program of a different<br />
service organization: Kiwanis <strong>International</strong>. And I always assumed back then that, one day, I’d be<br />
a Kiwanian.<br />
But do you know why I’m standing up here as president-elect of <strong>Rotary</strong> <strong>International</strong>, and not<br />
president-elect of Kiwanis <strong>International</strong>, training their incoming officers?<br />
Because no one ever invited me to a Kiwanis Club and no one ever asked me to join Kiwanis. I<br />
did, however, get invited to, and asked to join, the <strong>Rotary</strong> Club of Norman, Oklahoma. I’m here<br />
today because someone asked me.<br />
You have to ask. You — not the person sitting next to you or the person in charge of the membership<br />
committee or someone else who you might think would be better at it or who maybe has<br />
more time. Membership is not someone else’s job — it’s my job, it’s your job, it’s every Rotarian’s<br />
opportunity.<br />
You have to ask. You need to find those people who are waiting to be asked, find the people who<br />
never thought about <strong>Rotary</strong>, and let them know that you’d like to have them in your club. And if<br />
you do a good job and they say yes, and they become members — your job isn’t over. It’s only<br />
just beginning, because you need to mentor them, make sure that they find a meaningful role in<br />
the club — and that they get satisfaction out of <strong>Rotary</strong>.<br />
If we kept every new member who joined <strong>Rotary</strong>, we wouldn’t need to talk about membership<br />
anymore. We get plenty of new members in <strong>Rotary</strong> every year — about 120,000. But every year,<br />
just about that many members leave. And that’s why our numbers have stayed the same, at<br />
about 1.2 million members, for more than 15 years.<br />
It’s time to do something about it — not just talk about it but actually do something about it. The<br />
first thing we need to do is take a look at those who are leaving and find out why they’re leaving<br />
and what, if anything, we can do about it. We are committed to seeing <strong>Rotary</strong> membership<br />
climb to 1.3 million by 2015. That’s an absolutely achievable goal — but we need to determine<br />
why so many who come in the front door go right out the back door. In 1987 <strong>Rotary</strong> was given<br />
the opportunity to extend membership to women. It was, indeed, a red-letter day for <strong>Rotary</strong>. But<br />
if you look around you, it quickly becomes very obvious that there should be a lot more women in<br />
this room today than there are. There is no reason that half of the incoming governors shouldn’t<br />
be women. That’s something we all need to work on. Additionally, we need to work on bringing<br />
2 <strong>International</strong> Assembly Speeches 2013