Public relations templates

I read with interest the article in the Rotary magazine (October) and the paragraph: “Clubs are closing because no-one is taking on leadership roles, and we have clubs which won’t change but still want younger people to join.”

Most organisations run top-down management, while Rotary appears to run bottom-up management, leaving each club to be run as an autonomous unit.

From my limited experience of district organisation having joined Rotary in 2020, they have a team to support clubs for individual approaches and events like district forums.

As a suggestion, Rotary GB&I could publish a professional PR guidance leaflet for clubs, including delivery by the management of regular social media slots.

The public will then see that Rotarians do deliver and an organisation that appeals to them to support and hopefully join.

Graham Avison,

Pershore Rotary Club, Worcestershire

Forge closer links with Probus

As a former Rotarian, and now Chair of Charlbury Probus Club, I believe there should be closer links between the two organisations.

Probus was started in the UK by Rotarians in 1963 and was designed for those Rotarians who no longer wanted to be active in fund-raising or running the club but still wanted to keep in touch with former Rotarians.

It has grown to an estimated 1,200 clubs with 40,000 members in the UK and over 5,000 clubs worldwide.

The original founders were also keen to encourage the often-reluctant older officers to “move on” to promote younger leadership and therefore younger members.

As a long-time Rotarian, who even started a new club which is still going, I cannot help thinking there should be clearer links between the two groups perhaps at district level.

Paul Jackson,

Probus Club of Charlbury and District, Oxfordshire

Round hole, square pegs

I was really encouraged to read (Rotary August) that our new Rotary International President, Gordon McInally, was in praise of the words of Doug Forsyth as he explained how his Passport club works: “We don’t have meals or weekly meetings. We meet once a month for a coffee and we do projects…We’re here to do Rotary, not talk Rotary.”

President Gordon agreed the importance of ‘not meeting for meetings’ sake’, however, surely this is a message that we need to put out to the general public, the majority of whom still think of Rotary in terms of elderly men, meeting weekly for a formal dinner, with attendance requirements and maybe a speaker.

The round hole of the traditional Rotary club, no matter how the members dress, will remain that shape unless a drastic change is made to its format to accommodate the expectations of the younger, square pegs.

Jill Moss,

Rotary Club of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire