John Lobosco, our District Governor for 2018-2019, was our guest and speaker on July 16. John joined Rotary in 2005 when he became a member of the Rotary Club of South Portland-Cape Elizabeth. His first Rotary meeting was actually a social event, a Lobster Bake at Fort Williams. When he won the raffle that night, he knew he was meant to join. He was engaged early with club activities and committee roles, and the rest is history.
John Lobosco congratulates Deb Shangraw
John spoke about the District Strategic Plan which was developed based on visioning sessions held across the District last year. These sessions identified four areas for us to focus on to make our District and our Club stronger: Public Image, Membership, Collaboration, and Leadership & Succession Planning.
Public image - Rotary has development materials that can be customized and used by every club. John has asked each club to appoint a person to become an expert on the People of Action campaign (#peopleofaction). Clubs should plan to use the updated branding on their webpage, on social media, and on any club brochures and other promotional materials.
Membership – Our current District membership is a little over 1600, up a bit from the end of last year. During visioning sessions, participants identified a desire to become a district of 2000 by 2023. We can accomplish this goal if each club can bring in 10% new members each year and lose 5% or less. For a club our size, that means growing net 4 members in the current Rotary year. Research shows that people who lead engaged lives live longer than others. In a world of billions of people, only 1.2M are Rotarians. There are so many wonderful people in our community. Let’s ask them to join us.
Collaboration – Clubs become stronger through collaboration: sharing ideas, sharing best practices, doing what we can to support each other’s efforts. John is asking each club to build or maintain at least one Little Free Library in our community. In the works are an interactive map of international projects across the district and our next district conference. Tentatively the District Conference will be a family friendly event held on June 22, 2019 at Fort Williams. PDG Lawrence Furbish is chairing. Contact him if you’d like to be part of the planning team.
Leadership & Succession Planning - There are many tools available from Rotary.org and within the district to help members in all roles and responsibilities. He pointed to the importance of having a PE in place at the start of any new year, so the President can focus on running the club and not on finding their successor.
At the conclusion of his talk, John quoted former Ambassador Andrew Young who spoke at the Atlanta Conference n 2017. He said: “Rotary is the glue that holds civil society together”.
John signs a book for Walker Library