Friday, October 16, 2009

Excerpt from the International President's October message

Move To Grow Campaign  International Eberhard Wirfs

..... The club is like the ginkgo tree which I adopted as the symbol of my MOVE TO GROW theme.  Like the ginkgo, a club needs to be nurtured and cultivated to continue growing, it needs to stretch and move to receive sun light, and it needs to adapt to the environment around it to survive.  Yet sometimes change happens slowly enough where we don't even notice it, and then we find ourselves behind.

This can also be true for clubs, especially older ones, where ways of working and meeting may have become routines, where activities and projects may have become a bit out dated, and where membership might have been going slowly down as a result.

But such challenges can be addressed, if you - the Club Leaders - create a plan and commit to action.  Sometimes it's as simple as adopting a new project, or recruiting a few younger members to bring a spark of new ideas, or changing the format of your club meetings and activities to liven things up.   So during the next three months, I'm humbly asking all clubs to adopt at least one new strategy to make your club even more vibrant.........

There are many strategies that can help existing clubs grow, such as:
    * Inviting more spouses and women through the We Need You campaign.
    * Organizing recruiting campaigns using Lions Clubs International's "Best Practices."
    * Forming club branches
    * Identifying clubs below 20 members in need of special assistance

LIONS LET US MOVE TO GROW

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is an interesting article, and perhaps significant given the decline in memberships clubs. This phenomenon is not unique to the Lions Clubs but has affected volunteer clubs across the board as indicated this article.

My question is how has the club risen to the challenge to "adopt at least one new strategy to make your club even more vibrant"?


Perhaps, as a suggestion you may want to indicate to your readers the extent to which the club has undertaken the mantle to implement change within it structure.

Looking forward to your response.

O.