MAKING OUR CLUB RELEVANT AND ATTRACTIVE
Clifton Warren was born in the US but came to Australia in the early 90's. He liked the place so much he has been here ever since.
During his early years here, he was a consultant in Perth. He was invited to the Rotary Club of Melville as a guest. Clifton was surprised to meet members who were local business professional people. He enjoyed the experience so much that he decided to join. From there he went to Auckland and became a member of a Rotary club. Then he came to Melbourne and initially became a member of the Albert Park club where, as President, he was responsible for a significant increase in membership. He is now a member of the Rotary Club of Melbourne.
As a long-standing Rotarian and a business consultant, he feels he is suitably experienced to speak and advise about marketing and membership in Rotary clubs. Sadly, he says, over the past 10-15 years most clubs have been losing members or, at best, their membership has stagnated. For example, his club, one of the largest in Australia, loses about 25 members each year and it struggles to replace them.
He believes that the most successful clubs are those that are closely connected with their community. When he asked about our membership, most members felt that our current membership of 37 was too low and that 50-60 would be the ideal number. He said that, with the right recruitment and retention strategies in place, this should be achievable. He said that there are over 400 businesses in Werribee. Surely, owners or managers of many of these businesses would jump at the opportunity to join a service club. Why aren't they here, he asked.
Clifton proposed a number of tools that could be used to enable us to realise our goal of increased and sustained membership. Incoming President Ross Conley indicated that they would be useful for us to set a strategy to attract the best people.