By Rob Byrne
Senior coordinator, The Rotary Foundation
When a club delivers real humanitarian impact through great service projects the club becomes much stronger as a result.
What’s not always apparent is the role The Rotary Foundation plays in enabling club members to deliver projects that truly make a difference in the world.
For example, a district grant often provides that extra funding a club needs to better engage with its community, by delivering outcomes that make a significant difference. And disaster response grants enable very timely relief when the community is impacted by crisis, allowing members to more effectively support local people in need.
By enabling clubs to deliver inspiring projects – projects that would otherwise have been out of reach – the Foundation helps clubs build their reputation in the community, and in the process attract new members. People want to be part of an organisation that’s doing great things.
This applies to current members as well. They too get inspired by the impact these projects deliver, which builds pride and greater engagement in the club.
Take the example of global grant projects. Invariably, these large projects are developed by Rotary members who have a passion to address an important issue. Global grant projects not only attract significant funding from the Foundation, they also receive financial support from like-minded districts, clubs and others around the world – along with the hands-on involvement of Rotary’s global network of members.
With this kind of backing, even a small club can deliver amazing impact, dramatically extend its reach, and engage its community in whole new ways.
However, that’s not the end of the process. Clubs, members and others who have seen firsthand what the Foundation makes possible often become passionate supporters of the Foundation – and this delivers the funding required to support further high-impact projects.
This self-reinforcing process is called a success cycle. And that’s exactly what your Foundation is here to do – to help our People of Action be extremely successful in doing good in the world.
The success cycle is a key outcome of the Rotary Action Plan to increase our impact, expand our reach, enhance participant engagement, and increase our ability to adapt.