The MAP to Stronger Clubs: DMC Karen & RID Patrick in Conversation

Episode 5: A Membership Convo with Karen and Patrick

In this episode of Voices of District 7020, host Rotarian Nerissa Persaud sits down with two remarkable leaders — District Membership Chair Karen Pinder and Rotary International Director for Zones 33 & 34 Patrick Eakes — to tackle a bold question: What is the real problem to solve in Rotary membership? Is it recruitment, or is it relevance?

Together, they break down the Membership Action Plan (MAP) and the Membership Success Center, showing how these tools are designed not to overwhelm with statistics but to humanise the Rotary experience. From understanding terms like attrition and net growth, to exploring why half of new members leave within three years, the conversation dives deep into how clubs can shift their focus from simply adding numbers to building relevance that retains and inspires.

Patrick and Karen share practical insights, relatable examples, and even a glimpse into the future with upcoming AI-driven tools, all while reminding us that at Rotary’s core, we’re not in the numbers business — we’re in the people business.

Tips you can put into action now:

• Ask your members directly — through surveys, focus groups, or conversations — and act on what you hear.
• Keep engagement personal — make sure members feel valued, connected, and involved from day one.
• Use MAP resources — from webinars to awards to the Membership Success Center, lean on existing tools for guidance.
• Simplify the language — translate technical terms like “attrition” into everyday conversation so members understand and own the issues.
• Focus on relevance, not just recruitment — create meaningful experiences that make people want to stay.

If your club has ever asked “Where do we start?” or “How do we keep members engaged?”, this episode offers clarity, courage, and a fresh reset in thinking about membership growth.

Transcript

A Membership Convo with Karen and Patrick

Nerissa Persaud Welcome to another episode of Voices of District seventy twenty, the podcast where we amplify the stories, ideas and impacts shaping Rotary's future across our district and beyond. I'm your host, Rotarian Nerissa, and today we're asking a big question what is the real problem to solve? Is it recruitment or is it relevance? To help us unpack this reset in thinking, we're joined by two remarkable leaders of our very own district membership chair, Karen Pinder and Rotary International Director for zones thirty three and thirty four, Patrick Eakes. Together, we'll explore what the Membership Action Plan map really means, how the Membership Success Centre fits into the picture, and why simplifying in membership language is essential if we're going to grow with strength and not just size. Karen Patrick, welcome.

Nerissa So Patrick, Let's start here before we go too far. We're going to take a step back. We often use terms like map membership, success center, or even words like attrition. But it can all sound very technical or confusing to many members, particularly those who may have embraced a particular way of managing their club membership for years. And this can create a real barrier to get members to use the platform, let alone get the benefits from its programmes. So let's break it down a bit. Can you take us back to the beginning? What problem was map designed to solve, and what was the moment you realised it could actually solve the problem?

Patrick Well, that's a big question, and I appreciate you asking There's a lot to unpack there. In February twenty twenty two. We assembled a group of experienced Rotarians who had worked in membership a good bit, but also had experience in other areas, and the first question we asked is what is the problem to solve? And we determined that maybe the biggest problem or the or the biggest opportunity was recognizing that each year almost all of our club presidents and presidents elect turnover. You know, there's churn there. We have we have new people come in and they may not know all the the characteristics of a normal membership cycle, the fact that clubs lose members every year. Many club presidents don't know that, that they're likely to lose fifteen or so percent of their members every year. And as a result, we thought we have an opportunity to to educate, to inspire, to bring resources to all of these clubs and particularly to their leaders so they can set realistic goals. They can develop a plan, a membership plan, and have the resources to reach those goals so that we have more robust results in all our clubs. And of course, that means in our districts, in our zone too.

Nerissa Fantastic. Karen. Alongside map the membership action plan, we hear about Membership Success Center. To some people, the two sound interchangeable and that can create some level of confusion. Could you break down the difference between Map and the Membership Success Center, and how they work together to help clubs?

Karen Okay, sure. So the membership action plan, I would say, is the overarching strategic roadmap. And it's designed to help clubs and districts build a culture of consistent moderate membership growth. And it basically consists of three types of components. The first one is the monthly membership webinars. These are very dynamic, short forty five minute sessions that focus on membership, and they tend to be peer to peer learnings, where we hear from presidents and club leaders around zones thirty three and thirty four who have had success in delivering different strategies that have proven successful in growing membership, and they're held the second Monday of each month at five thirty Miami time. So I would encourage you to mark your dates for October thirtieth and November tenth to participate in these very well produced bite sized nuggets that you'll get some action points that clubs can take away and implement right away. So that's the first component, these webinars that occur on a monthly basis. The second is the Map Awards which recognize clubs and districts for their consistent growth. What I really appreciate about these map awards is they're given at the end of the year. So after all the numbers have been tallied, and we see the actual growth of of every club and clubs are also recognized if they have grown year over year, for multiple years. And the third, very impactful component of the membership action plan is the Membership Success Center. So I hope that clarifies the difference between the two. The Membership Success Center is really a component of the Membership Action plan.

Nerissa Persaud I see. And this is still relatively new information for many clubs, for many club presidents and membership chairs. I've learned about it personally over the last twelve months, but a lot of its components remain a bit of a foreign concept because on a club level, we're not actively participating in it. We have the dates, the emails are being sent out, but I suppose it's bridging that connection between having it versus using it. So, Patrick, this question is for you. We're here in words like attrition, net growth, retention. But for many club leaders those terms can feel a bit technical. They might even feel a little intimidating if you are unable to translate it in a real way. So let's try to do that so that anyone listening might be able to picture it, and then picture what that might look like for their club. And we hear about rotary losing half of its members within three years. But can you explain what that means on a club level in everyday terms, not just statistics.

Patrick Sure, sure. Let me first take the first part of what you asked. There some of those terms like attrition and retention and net growth. So first off, net growth just means comparing the number of members on July first versus the previous July first. So net growth just means that over the course of a rotary year that a club has grown. Or conversely, if there's a net loss, if if the club has fewer members than the year before. Now, rotary tends to publish statistics that they call retention. And what they are talking about is looking at the members on a July first. What percentage of those members are still in the club a year later? How many were retained? And frequently we'll see numbers around eighty five percent now because we also talk about attraction rates, which means let's say we start with a club of one hundred. We want to bring in fifteen new members. We would say that's an attraction rate of fifteen percent fifteen new versus a base of one hundred. Okay. Our thought was, let's not make people do math. Let's not let's not say you have retention. That's eighty five. So we talk about attrition. And attrition instead of talking about retaining eighty five percent, we talk about attrition of fifteen percent, meaning we lost fifteen of the one hundred members we had on July first. So hopefully those two definitions make sense. And it would be intuitive that we want our attraction rate to be higher than our attrition rate. If we lose fifteen members, fifteen percent. In this example, we want to be sure that we bring in sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty new members to have a higher attraction rate. Now, that statistic that you mentioned, it is absolutely true. I just attended a State of Rotary membership, webinar and international call. And that statistic was repeated again. And so here's here it is. New members who join about half of them leave before they reach three years of membership. That is a startling statistic. I mean, any of us who in any way has a business operation would be very difficult to operate if we lost half our customers in the first three years. So what that tells us is we have a real opportunity to embrace those new members, to engage those new members, to be sure that that they have a voice in the club, to be sure that the club is meeting their needs. To do that, we have to ask them what's working for you, what's not. And then we have to address that. So, when we talk about a problem to solve that's a problem to solve is that we have, in this case, an attrition rate of fifty percent of our new members in the first three years.

Nerissa This is a really good point that you've brought up. If we have a problem to solve, we need to ask our members. Karen, when you talk about the three tiers that embody the membership action plan, I do remember that we are able to do surveys as well. So how responsive is this platform so that club leaders, presidents, membership chairs can use it simply to get those kind of information if they don't already know that part exists to simplify how things function.

Karen Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm really excited to say that, the Membership Success Center tool was launched with a survey that was, possible for clubs to send out to their membership, but now it's possible to customize that survey so you can really dig a little bit deeper and address aspects that may be affecting your club in a unique or a different way than just having one one size fits all survey. So that definitely is an exciting development that has occurred recently.

Nerissa Persaud We all have different technical skills. Karen, what if we don't find the customization that we need from the platform?

Karen If you find that even customizing it isn't going to work for you and your club. Don't be discouraged. It's really important that you find opportunities to assess your club and rotary.org has I think it's seven different assessment tools that you can use. So feel free to look at those, if one doesn't fit, you know, there's other third party providers such as Survey Monkey. What I encourage clubs to do is to make it very personal. Not anonymous, but personal. Do focus groups. I've seen success with clubs who have purposely developed the focus groups in a very small amount of people and people who are friendly with each other. I don't want to say the word click because some people think of that in a negative way. But if you get together, you know, Susie, Bob and Joe all play golf together and they have relationships that are very deep and strong outside of the club, it's really impactful to get those three persons together in that focus group, because you're going to have an opportunity to have a more open and comfortable dialogue. There's definitely something available for for all clubs and all different club cultures where you can hear back from your membership. It's so important to do it at least annually and then track the changes. If you implement changes, tell your members this is what we've decided to implement based on your feedback. Or we hear you. We hear that you want to do this, but we're not quite ready to do it and give some explanation why this transparency from club leaders to their general members is really important to generate confidence in club leaders. And we know that's one of the most important aspects in the overall club experience.

Nerissa I love that because we start to humanize a program, we start to see it as not just something that we store data, but something that we can ask the right questions and get to really understand what matters most to our members, and then develop plans so that that can be achieved. Now I want to talk a little bit about relevance reset. Today, rotary leaders are charged more with club growth. This means greater recruitment emphasis, but it can be a double edged sword if clubs aren't attracting and engaging with the relevance to support retention. Patrick, what does that mean to you and what does it look like when a club shifts its focus from just thinking about adding members to actually making the rotary experience feel relevant in their people's lives.

Patrick Nerissa I'm glad you asked that. It's really the difference between a transaction and a relationship. At our core in rotary, we're in the people business. We're in the business of providing a great experience for our members. We're in the business of helping people's lives, often saving people's lives. So to be relevant to members, we have to be sure about what our core mission is a club where our focus is, and we have to be sure that that matters to our members. So using a survey like Karen just described is a great way to get the feedback from members. Are we going in the direction you want? If not, what can we do to provide the experience that you want at the end of the day in rotary, we're like a lot of organizations. We're competing for people's discretionary time and money. And if we don't bring value, it just does no good to bring them into the club. For them to have a bad experience and to leave, to be part of that fifty percent, that leaves so early. So we have to be very focused on, the people, our members, and developing that long term relationship where we bring value to them.

Patrick Exactly. Now, Patrick, you've worked with clubs and leaders across zone thirty three thirty four and I imagine the world. Can you share a simple example of a club that embraced the membership action plan, not just to grow numbers, but to become more relevant to its community? What had to change as a result of that happening?

Patrick I can give you a great example of that, even in my home city. And I always try to think of examples away from, from my home area. But I have a great one in my area. We had two clubs that, were we're not doing a good job of meeting their members needs. Part of it was just the general environment of the club. Part of it was not being as active in services as some members wanted. So a number of disaffected members left and started a new club. And they they asked, what do you want? As a result, this club actually meets twice a month in the morning for breakfast, twice a month in the evening for cocktails. I don't recommend the breakfast in the cocktails together, although that works for some people. But they but they do two and they do two, and and they are doing relevant projects that their members have asked for. This club went from formation to sixty five members in eighteen months. And and I will tell you, it has attracted multiple past governors from within my district who have left their clubs. They've recognized this is a dynamic club. It's doing important work. It's fun. people leave inspired. They don't feel like, oh, I've got to go to rotary this week. They think, wow, our meeting's back around. I can't wait to see my friends. I can't wait to to do important work and to have fun. It they they have just put everything that we're talking about in this call into practice and they've shown the results.

Nerissa We touched on how, as a club leader, you can tap into asking your members what it is you want or finding creative ways of doing that and extracting that information. That in itself is a problem to solve. What are some of the common problems that you've noticed and the Map program being appropriate to assist with?

Karen Thanks for that question. I would say that's one of the great ways in which the Membership Success Center really shines, because it helps clubs to identify with data, not necessarily what they think the problem is, but what the data actually shows the problem to be, whether it's attrition, you're losing members. Now we know that people leave because of life reasons, right? Something happens in their life. We can't control that as a Rotary Club. But there's other reasons like club experience, club culture. Something negative happened and it wasn't resolved properly. Those are things that we can control. And so I want us to think of attrition in both of those aspects. And then the second thing is attraction. Is it that you're not bringing in enough new members? Is it that you have a very comfortable club and nobody wants to see anyone new? Well, maybe that's a cultural change that will have to evolve over time. But what the tool does, the Membership Success Center, is with the data provided, it will identify what your underlying problem is based on actual membership information. And then it will suggest some solutions. And invariably or not, most of those suggestions in terms of how to resolve either issue or some clubs have both issues going on at the same time, and that's not unusual. It will give you hyperlinks to either videos or seminars, webinars or actual, PDFs that will help guide you in helping to resolve those issues. And a lot of times, there's webinars, the MAP webinars that I mentioned earlier that will give you a video that will help you in solving some of these issues and instituting strategies that will help to you to resolve them.

Nerissa Persaud I absolutely love that you have touched on that. It's not just about us thinking how we feel about the problem, and then interpret that as what that problem to solve might be. It is actually getting data, real data, by asking questions to ensure that we are indeed looking at the right problem, that we are focusing on the issues that matter to our club members.

Nerissa Patrick, what are some of those common problems you see from the statistics?

Patrick People will say they leave for personal reasons. But when we take a little bit deeper dive, it usually comes down to unmet expectations. It comes down to, I wanted more I wanted more service opportunities, or I wanted more diversity among the service opportunities so that they're the ones that really speak to me. I can I can opt into, or perhaps more impactful, you know, service projects that are really moving the needle, in a meeting. It can come down to the basic culture, the welcoming nature of a club, the care for each other. And I just I think that clubs that pay attention to these kinds of issues, they become magnets. And that magnet works in two different ways. One, it's magnetic and pulling new people to the club because they see the energy, they see the excitement, they see the fun. But it's also a magnet for holding on to the members you have because they're getting that value. They don't want to leave. I have often said because my club has been so good to my children, they're nineteen and twenty two now. They're not really little kids, but there have been so good to them as they've grown up that I couldn't leave if I wanted to because my children would veto it. They would simply not allow me to leave my club because they have so many friends there. So when a club is bringing all of those types of value to a member other than the situations Karen described where life happens something, it's uncontrollable. They're not going to lose members when they do those things right.

Patrick Patrick, in terms of that specific area where you get the data that shows you the problem, how does that translate in helping clubs to now put plans into place? Yeah. Karen touched on this a bit. And maybe I'll expand on this and share a new piece of news that'll be coming. So within the Membership Success Center, we have this incredible library of resources. And, what happens is, as, a person is looking at the data. We'll see. Okay, maybe our attrition rate is a little bit high. They can click. Okay. What are things we can do to create an environment where we will lose fewer members? The same with attraction. All of this is presented both in numerical form and in graphical form. To make it very easy for data nerds like me who like the numbers, and for people who are much more visual to be able to see it graphically. Now I'll also mention these resources we have. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked by Rotary International staff, hey, is it okay if we refer people to the resources you have? And I'm like, hey, it's the World Wide Web. It's it's out there. It's available. So yes, absolutely. But here's the really cool preview I'm going to give you is that yesterday I signed an agreement. We're building an AI interface. And so what that will do is when a person logs in, no personal data is transmitted to the Membership Success center, but the person's club district, their level of, access, meaning their club president has a little more access than a typical member. All of that is transmitted. And this AI feature will take that. We'll look at the data and we'll more proactively create, an interaction with that number that is unique to the member and the club. So we're starting to build that AI interface now. It'll do all of that in the background. We won't see the robots doing their work. But it will be a more personalized, individualized kind of experience in the Membership Success Center that's coming soon.

Nerissa I absolutely love that. And anyone that knows me know that I really do love technology and just diving into it. But here's the thing it can be intimidating for a lot of people. So with an existing platform that might not yet translate in terminology to existing members, and adding new interfaces that are meant to make life simpler, it can still feel like we're adding on a tier of uncertainty. Patrick, how might we as leaders overcome this to make the conversation of all these changes more welcoming so that president's membership chairs want to sign on. Want to use it?

Patrick Well, first we can tell them you can't break it. So you can go in there and you can play with it, but you can't break it. You just you can't do anything that bad. So go and piddle. But but beyond that, out of district membership event demonstrate show people. Here's what you get when you go in there. Let's let's break down. So much of fear comes from unknown or maybe lack of confidence with technology. Show people how simple it is. Karen earlier talked about the survey, and I think we've got that down to three clicks or four clicks. And then the survey is launched to the entire club made it very, very simple. So I think there's demonstrations or even a side by side demonstration with a person who's using it for the first time. But I would always go back to that first comment, which is only half meant to be funny, you really can't break it. So, get in there and an experiment and see what you can learn and just know that, there's no downside. The upside is just that you can learn some things.

Nerissa Karen, you're an anchor for leading membership in our district. What would you say to a club president who just doesn't know where to start?

Karen Thanks, Nerissa. I would say just dive right in. We have the capability through Club Runner to access, the membership action plan and specifically the membership Success Center. Go explore it, click on the links. Be curious about it. And if you feel frustrated, you're not sure what you're looking at or what those terms mean, I would encourage you to reach out to myself, reach out to the membership action, team as well as, maybe first look at the webinar. Maybe you don't want to go exploring on your own without some guidance. So there is a webinar. I think there might even be more than one webinar, but I would encourage you to view the most recent webinar on the Map program. Included in that is a section on, a brief overview sort of a guide or a tour if you want to use that word of the key features of the Membership Success Center so that people feel comfortable with it. It's going to really help, um, club leaders to understand the reality of their club. And then once they set a goal, they'll be able to track their progress towards achieving that goal, which can be very powerful.

Nerissa Fantastic. Now looking ahead, Patrick, if we get this right, if relevance becomes our focus in the pursuit of growth, how do you think that transforms the future of rotary?

Patrick I think the biggest way it transforms the future rotary is it changes our brand. Our brand becomes wow, these are people who get it. They're hip. They use technology. They provide value to members. They provide an experience that members can't wait for. They're magnets. And I think by by transforming that brand and what people think of when they hear about rotary, that's one of those rising tide lifts all ships kind of situation. It's good for all of our clubs. I think that allows us to move ahead, really as the preeminent organization we are with just a better brand, that people understand what we're doing and they want to be a part of it.

Nerissa Karen, my final question is for you. You have been a big inspiration of mine when you talk about the membership action plan sharing all the information pulling us to so many different sectors of it. What are you excited about? What are you hopeful about with this program and our district and how it can help us?

Karen Thank you for those kind words. I would say I'm most excited about getting more clubs involved, more clubs using the platform. And really, taking away the fear they may have and any, ideas that they have that it might be like a top down mandate. It isn't that at all. This was created by Rotarians who are passionate about members to help members and clubs become stronger. Like RI director Patrick said the more strong clubs we have, the stronger our organization will be. The more impact we can have. The more collaboration we can conduct, the more connections we can make more opportunities for personal growth. And I think it just goes back to a very old fashioned saying, more hands make light work. And this is a very powerful tool that can help you get more hands.

Nerissa Persaud More hands make light work. I could not have said that better. Thank you. Karen. Thank you so much. As we all see, Rotary clubs do not grow from living in the shadows of the things we don't yet understand. They grow from honesty, from clarity, from willingness. Rotary has the tools and the world well, the world has the needs. The only thing left for us to do as Rotarians is to show up for real. Not perfectly, but truthfully and with curiosity. So what we've heard today is that map, the Membership Action plan is not about crunching numbers. And the Membership Success Center is not about chasing statistics. It's about relevance, about ensuring rotary means something so powerful in people's lives that they stay, grow and lead the way. If we shift our mindset from simply recruitment to relevance, the numbers will follow. And maybe, just maybe, that's the rotary reset we all need. I'm Rotarian Nerissa and this has been Voices of District seventy twenty. DMC Karen and RI, Director Patrick, thank you so much for sharing all that good stuff with us. Thank you.

Al Thank you for inviting me. It was a pleasure. It's been a real treat. Thank you. Nerissa.