Ang Magiting - The Official Web Site of Rotary Club Makati North

Just One

Dear Fellow RCMNers,

Our members know that the Philippines is now on Christmas mode. Given that the holiday season has already started, I hope it’s not presumptuous of me to ask for a Yuletide present, in behalf of Makati North of course. That is, I’m asking for each member to recruit or reactivate just one member.

But first, allow me to express my gratitude to those who have invited prospective members to attend previous meetings. Share with us your feedback – particularly the resistance for signing up – so that we may address concerns and prepare a course of action. And please, invite your friends to a weekly meeting or an activity again.

As I was saying, the membership drive is critical to maintain a healthy club. Each of you is the real strength of Makati North. That goes without saying, so I won’t elaborate. Suffice it to say, perhaps, that strong membership numbers give us capabilities to do things, like serving the community and having more fun at our weekly meetings.

At my President-Elect Training (PET) seminar, we were compelled to list down a target for membership growth for this Rotary year. That meant, each of the 72 club presidents in Rotary District 3830 had to cough up a number for recruitment – if wanted to have lunch that day. My hungry stomach told to declare a target: a net growth of 10 during my term as president. If that is realized, our roster would grow to 55.

I thought then – as I do now, even after healthy meal – that a net growth of 10 members is a conservative number, if we all work together. Modesty aside, I have been able to reactivate one inactive member and recruit another. That brings down our target to eight new faces, and I am not done recruiting.

I know it’s not easy, but all I’m asking is for each member to make an earnest effort to recruit one – JUST ONE. Even if we have a mere 25-percent success rate, the result would bring us to our goal for this Rotary year. But why set the target much lower than one member recruiting one person? Personally, I think one recruit per member is doable.

Never mind what I pledged the district. We should go about this full steam ahead, because it’s good for the club, because this will give us a capability to do more for others, because having more people in the weekly meetings will make attending more fun, and most important of all, because all of you know that we can do it.

Your officers and other members have made a commendable effort to lineup interesting guest speakers for our weekly meetings. In my opinion, this effort is paying off because we see more warm bodies on Wednesdays. I think that returning to Manila Peninsula has helped, too, given that the location is convenient to many and the venue adds to the prestige of the club. I hope these two factors alone is enough for you invite members for lunch.

And to help address the sticker shock associated with joining Makati North, the club has slashed the dues for the Baby Rotarian. In a way, we have designed it so that the first year is actually like a trial year, because we are confident that when they see the quality of our members, the various projects we are undertaking, and all the other things associated with Makati North, that they will decide to stick around long after the first year – until we threaten to make them president.

Last, let me just add that there is an effort to mandate each Rotarian to recruit members and penalize those who do not. While I believe that recruiting is a responsibility of each member, I’m not comfortable making it into a rule. I’m confident that every member of Makati North will not have a problem in realizing the one-recruit target. But let’s not do it because we were told to do it. Let’s do it simply because we can.