Saturday, October 3, Rotarians from around District 5440 assembled at Little America in Cheyenne to share ideas and learn from our peers. To increase our ‘institutional knowledge’, the attendees documented their own insights, and below is that collection – unedited, unorganized and unattributed.  Read more...
 
Saturday, October 3, Rotarians from around District 5440 assembled at Little America in Cheyenne to share ideas and learn from our peers.  The District Assembly was planned and led by our own Rotarian extraordinaire Phyllis Abt - Way to Go Phyllis!!  Twelve RCFC members attended, plus 8 members from our Rotaract Club.  Five RCFC Members led workshops, including Maegan Batson, Chuck Rutenberg, Kerrie Luginbill, Jim Epstein and John Trone, plus Alexandra Orahovats, President of our Rotaract Club.    
 
To increase our ‘institutional knowledge’, the attendees documented their own insights, and below is that collection – unedited, unorganized and unattributed.  The objective is to remember and share what we learned with all ‘leaders’ in the club – that’s all of us! 
 
Enjoy, and feel free to share or act on any idea you see here, or that this list may trigger.  We all have responsibility to make RCFC the most Relevant, Representative, Serving Fellowship we can possibly be.
 
Yours in Rotary Service,
 
Stacy
 
p.s. The “I” in all comments below are the comment author, not me. - Stacy
 
  • I continue to be in awe of the contributions that our club members make to the district.  We are truly leaders in the district and District 5440 benefits from our participation.  I also think that those contributing to the district benefit from the leadership development and the recognition by others that their contributions to Rotary are worthy.
  • There is so much to learn from the clubs in our district.  Large or small, rural or urban, there are so many innovative ideas from clubs in our district.  I wish that more members would take advantage of the assemblies
  • Dan Himelspach lobbied hard for flexibility and fostering the development of satellites. Our satellite has been very successful in its short history.  We need to do all that we can to continue to support that effort and to share our results and strategies with other clubs.
  • We need to do a better job of marketing the assembly to our members.  Perhaps testimonials from past attendees would be helpful.  Thoughts on how to do this would be appreciated.
  • Excellent sessions by Maegan Batson on Fund Raising, and Kerrie Luginbill and Val Kailburn on Marketing Rotary.
    • Make sure we connect fund raising with the use of the money, and put it in terms of WIIFM from the donor perspective.  Get recipients of Rotary donations involved in the fund raising.  Let them tell their story to the donors.
    • Connect with Rotaract and Interact parents and invite them to Rotary
    • Need to be doing more posting of photos on Facebook and getting members to ‘like’ them.
    • Identify yourself on Linked-In with Rotary
    • Create a Rotary Toolkit to be given to those receiving grants from Rotary.  Logo, press release format, photos of receiving the grant and a sticker that says “We are a Fort Collins Rotary Service Project”.  Idea is to enable them to promote their grant from Rotary. 
  • Excellent presentation by past 5450 DG Dan Himelspach on making Rotary relevant to the next generation.  Kill Classifications!  Be creative.  Worry about participation, not attendance.  Make Rotary easy to belong, relevant and enjoyable.  Satellite is about accessibility to Rotary. 
  • Instagram is a great social platform for us to incorporate. Even if the majority of our members are currently using, it's a wonderful opportunity to communicate, interact and share with our community and visually represent who we are and what we do. PS- I already made our new account! Coming soon as @RotaryFTC
  • I have already been working on a list of local media contacts for direct submission, and the importance of this was stressed...so I got a good kick in the butt to finish it up and share it with our different committees
  • I learned the most effective press release format is:
    • Headline
    • Sub-headline
    • Intro Paragraph (dateline)
    • Quote** (don't skip this piece)
    • Body Copy (nuts and bolts of info)
    • Closing Statement
    • Boiler Plate (mission statement and contact info for person submitting)
  • ***Always include a photo (often, even if it doesn't get printed, it could end up online. So share photos!)
  • ***Even if you don't get a response the first time, don't be afraid to submit it again!
  • We should rotate opinion pieces (letters to the editors) from our club members on topics we are passionate about, as the rate of publishing is great!
  • We should submit thumbs up (also great publishing rates) for our different awardees and when receiving grants
  • Contacts and connections. Went to get info on interact. Met district contact. Also met president of Cheyenne interact and heard some tips. Met adult sponsor of big thompson group. Good to hear directly from people involved. Met Rotoract students and threw out idea for their support of interact. Will follow-up to help get fossil ridge interact going.
  • There are several advantages for using Rotary Direct for members to contribute to TRF (it relieves the treasurer of some work, it is a better record for tax purposes)
  • One thing that Rotoract members would like to do with our club is to participate in international travel to projects
  • We have a lot of Recognition points built up with our members and our club that we can put to use.  For example, we can help new members get their first Paul Harris Fellow and we can use points to recognize people in the community.  This may be a good way to recruit some new members as well.
  • I think we should follow up on all three of these as a club.  For example, we could decide to pay for a Rotoractor to go on a project site visit to one of our projects in Guatemala or Mexico.  Also, we can discuss at a board meeting how to best use or recognition points.  Regarding Rotary Direct, we could discuss this with Jack to see what he thinks and bring it up at a board meeting. 
  • It was a well run, cost and time effective event.
  • When raising funds all pleas need to be tied to the cause not the organization people.
  • Be sure to plan fund raising activity for net funds while carefully monitoring effort, risk and potential donors.
  • We should have the Chair of the Greeley Rotary Centennial Committee present a program about their planning process to our Club.   His name is Ron Wildeman   rwildeman@norfolkiron.com   970-352-6722
  • I learned about some Nicaragua projects that Rotary Gillette is working on and I am following up with Lyn to coordinate.  It is timely, since I had just met Friday with Lucas Wolf, Assistant International Director for Trees, Water & People.  Lucas is now based in Nicaragua, but was a former Rotary Peace Fellow originally from Fort Collins.  I am meeting Lucas in two weeks in Guatemala to do a site visit of a stove project that I am helping with personally.
  • I also talked to Alexis from After Work club and they have an interesting project, where they are working on pre-fab houses and sending to Mexico, sounded like Habit for Humanity remote.  It sound like a great way to get involved with international service without having to travel.  Alexis is sending information.  This might be good collaboration project.