Membership or Statistics
18 November 2002

For the last decade, Rotary International has been talking about Rotary having over 1 million to 1.2 million Rotarians in as many if not more countries as there were in the United Nations. Successive RI leadership have been telling district governors and clubs the importance of membership growth. The last two RI Presidents had designed incentive schemes and awards for districts that had demonstrated outstanding achievements in membership growth.

The official RI statistics show that as at 30 June 2002, we had 1,243,431 Rotarians worldwide in 31,256 clubs in 164 Rotary countries. At the last RI Convention in Barcelona, awards and praises were showered upon the district governors who had the most impressive percentage growth. This is all very good, until we heard from sources close to RI that some of these districts have since lost many members and many clubs have given up their charters after 1 July 2002. Indeed, RI has since lost over 350 members, which has prompted more than a few murmurs in the Board and suggestions that maybe the membership awards should only be given a year later in the future.

What do we have here? How does that square up with the 4-Way Test? Are we more interested in statistics and awards than our products? And what are our products?

We have often seen a drop in membership numbers on 1 July every year. Some district leaders have called such phenomenon a technical correction. Some club presidents would persuade members who were about to leave or who had left to allow their names to remain on the club roster, to make the records look nicer. Our District has been talking about having close to 2,000 members for many years, but our membership figures have never picked up since the mid-nineties; and to date we are struggling around the 1,500 line.

Now, let us look at our friends in the Lions Clubs International. They now have an estimated 1.4 million members in 44,500. And last month, in October 2002, they chartered at least 20 clubs in Shenzhen alone, each with at least 50 members, all bona fide Chinese citizens.

While it is true that we need members who can impart and interpret Rotary and that we should be more interested in our products and in taking service to the people who need ours most, it is high time we look at the fundamentals of the District with a view to devising plans that would ensure long term sustainable development.