President Richard informed members of the passing of Paul Rostrup's mother-in-law - Alice Sears, and passed on the condolences of the members of the club.  Alice passed away peacefully on January 25 at the age of 95.  Cremation has taken place and family and friends will be invited to a memorial gathering in the summer at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto. 

Wayne Boehler was most pleased to report that after his recent trip to the Cancer Centre in London he is now two years cancer free.

 

Louise Gardiner was also very pleased to report that Graham had his one year check up after his double lung transplant and was told everything is looking great!  Louise was also please to have little of the usually traffic issue into and back from Toronto and made the trip home in one hour and 5 minutes!
 

Question:  Which remaining countries are still Polio endemic?
Answer:  Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Our pot is growing - now at $587.  Those unable to turn over Jack to day were - Adrian DeCoo, Russ St. Louis and Richard Bruckeder.

Members of the Club's Strategic Planning Steering Committee presented a report today outlining several of the concerns that have come to light as a result of the work being done on the strategic plan.

 

Adrian DeCoo spoke about the progress that has been made with the strategic planning work.  We do have new, tentative Vision and Mission statements and have identified 6 key priorities.  However, it has become challenging to develop 

 specific plans to address these priorities as several concerns have come to light.

 

Adrian presented information about the "typical" life cycle of a Rotary Club or similar organization and four key elements - Vision, Projects, Relationships and Management.  When all four of these elements are present and active the organization is vibrant - capable of achieving their goals, fun to be a part of and attractive to new members.  However, over time one of more of these elements can become stagnant or disappear completely resulting in a lack of vibrancy and inability to function at a high level.  In particular, if the organization losses its Vision, and perhaps becomes complacent and happy to stay with the status quo, it can enter a death spiral.  The sooner an organization recognizes this situation the better it has of overcoming the issues and rejuvenating itself.

 

For our club the following concerns have come to light:

 

In many ways these are collectively summarized in the concern for the Capacity of the club.

 

Bill Proctor then provide some data to illustrate some of the concerns.  The first chart show the membership of the club over the past 12 or so years.

 

 

As can be seen, our membership has dropped 50% over this time and we have to wonder where it will be in 5 to 10 years.  

 

We next looked at the number of years our members have been in Rotary:

61% have been in Rotary for 15 or more years
55% have been in for 20 or more years
40% have been in for 25 or more years

 

We are an aging club and we are not inducting a significant number of new members.

 

Although our numbers are decreasing we are still a hard working club with our fundraising activities have moderate to excellent results.   Car Draw revenues have been decreasing somewhat over the past few years but In Vino is maintaining a healthy result and our Online Auction results continues to grow well.  However, the question that needs to be asked is for much longer can we sustain these activities?  How our members becoming burnt out?

 

Martin Jones then spoke about some of the Symptoms with which, we as a club, are dealing:

Martin then posed two different scenarios for our 100th Anniversary in 2022.  One in which we do recognize the past 100 years but also acknowledge the demise of the club due to declining membership; and another where, in addiction to celebrating our past history and successes we also rejoice in the rejuvenation of the club and look forward to the next 100 years.  Martin asked members which scenario would each or us prefer?

 

Paul Rostrup concluded the session by presenting a Rejuvenation Plan through which we will examine and deal with these concerns in greater detail.  There will be four special Club Assemblies:

 

- Meeting Frequency / Format / Venue / Timing

- Membership Types / Cost / Flexibility

 

- An Active Process / Focused Groups

- Greater Diversification

 

Closing Remarks & Reminders