Our speaker Brad Howard is a Past District Governor of District 5170 (California’s Silicon Valley), and a past member of the Board of Directors of Rotary International’s for the 2015-17 Rotary years.  He is currently serving as aide to Jennifer Jones, the 2022-2023 Rotary International President.  Brad just completed serving a three-year term as Chairman of Rotary’s Communication Committee, and was a member of the 2020 Rotary Convention committee, which planned the 2020 Virtual Convention.

Brad is hoping that Rotary membership is at the low tide point, and it is about to start increasing in our established areas. Some corporations used to pay for certain employees to attend Rotary meetings and made contributions to the Rotary Foundation.  Now, it is more typical for corporations to engage in serving the community directly.  Thus, for-profit corporations have become part of Rotary's competition.

Brad spoke to us about the challenges and opportunities for Rotary Clubs in this pandemic year.  Most clubs, like ours, are meeting only virtually since the COVID-19 pandemic kicked into gear.  Brad noted that, depending on the club, attendance is often better with virtual meetings than before.  Since there is not a meal, meetings are often shorter (60 vs. 90 minutes) and it is possible to get better speakers.

Brad said that Rotary is preparing a proposal for how clubs can host hybrid meetings, in which some attend face-to-face and some attend via Zoom.  He said that an upcoming Melbourne Conference will be conducted this way, and he hopes it will be a big success.  A guest, Hiranand Thani,  Past-President of the Barbados Rotary Club, said that their club is holding hybrid meetings and that it is working beautifully.

Brad told us that Rotary is a membership organization that does service projects.  Clubs are more successful that focus on the members.  Clubs need to better understand their members and help them succeed in Rotary and in the rest of their lives.  If we do that, our clubs will naturally grow.  We need our members to love our clubs.  Building stronger clubs will attract more members.