On Friday 15 October, 2021 Rotarians Mike Gosling and Letitia de Lima provided a brief look into the Broadwater Southport Rotary Club's ClubRunner (CR) membership management and communication platform.
 

ClubRunner membership and emailing capabilities

Letitia shared an introduction to CR and how to access the Email Message Centre to prepare email templates and send emails to members.

The talk explored ClubRunner for clubs, BSR Club's website, and BSR Club Facebook page. 
 
A strong feature of ClubRunner is that emails do not show who is cc'd in the email, keeping these emails free from scammers.
 
A downside raised by a member was that they could not reply directly to all members receiving the email, as they could before when everyone's email was displayed. In the CR email system, this would require a member to enter CR and write their own email reply, sending it to the membership group.
 
We shall explore with CR Support if reply emails can include all those to whom the email was addressed. Letitia requested members to login to CR and update their own details including their profile. It is important that members go into CR and change their email to keep it current.
 
Denis O'Brien highlighted that BSR Club documents are available on the CR website, listed under: Admin → Admin (Classic) → View Club Documents.
 

BSR Club Website & Facebook Page

Mike shared aspects of BSR Club's updated website. He posed the question, "What is the purpose of our website?" It is to turn visitors into prospective Club prospects or members and/or donors to Rotary. It is also for members and new members to learn and read about our activities, and as Letitia pointed out, for prospective speakers to understand their audience when they volunteer their time to come and address members.

 
A lot of work is required to ensure the BSR Club's website appears on the front page of Google searches. For example, when a member of the public currently searches Google for "Rotary Club Gold Coast", our club's website does not appear on the front page of Google search results. This can be for several reasons, including, our Home Page not being optimized and our website being content poor for when the Google Bot visits and indexes our site. Regular new content will always beat static pages.
 
Google survives and grows on NEW website content. The more good content we give Google's search engine, the higher Google will rank our website in its pages. BSR Club Members can assist in this endeavour by providing the webmaster information for posts and pages.
 
For example,
  • Mike will add blog posts (stories) of our weekly speakers.
  • Directors provide the webmaster with a brief one-page precise of the activities under their jurisdiction these would add to our website content.
  • Members write short blog posts (stories) for the website.
Mike also addressed the issue of the BSR Club's purpose (passion) or vision that appears on our Home Page: What is the one thing the BSR Club does better than any other club to attract new members and donations? Currently this is set as:
 
"Together we see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change — across the globe, in our communities, and in ourselves."
 
This is a sound generic statement of what Rotary is about — action, change, camaraderie, unity.

So that's what every Rotary Club is about, which means that BSR Club is not differentiating itself from what other Rotary Clubs do — So why join BSR Club over another club?

Mike provided some examples of how BSR Club could update the BSR Club's positioning statement:

  • The only Rotary Club in Australia to promise veterans, sick children, and disadvantaged youth and adults to raise $10,000/month within 1-year for their care and welfare… or we’ll work until we do.
  • The only Rotary Club in Australia to raise $100,000 each year helping veterans, sick and disadvantaged children, the homeless, and those facing disaster or humanitarian crises.
  • Broadwater Southport Rotary helps veterans, disadvantaged children, and youth get all the education, financial support, and best possible treatment they want, to have happy and fulfilled lives.
  • Broadwater Southport Rotary helps advance social or public welfare worldwide by helping veterans, the physically challenged, and those disadvantaged through poverty and not having the resources to build a better life.
Rotary Club of Hope Island  has their positioning as: "Taking action to improve local communities and the world."
 
Mike highlighted the proposed Member Profiles web page, and requested members to either update their profile in CR or email Mike 100-150 words on their profile. Please include a sentence on what Rotary means to you. This list of member profiles will assist prospective members to "suss out" our club, help new members come to know existing members, and provide prospective guest speakers information on who their audience is.
 
Dennis O'Brien pointed out that a recent survey of why people join Rotary found two critical reasons:
  1. Making a contribution to the world, and
  2. Friendship
BSR Club could look at adding these phrase to our vision or positioning statement.
 
Letitia and Mike agreed there is lots more to cover in highlighting the benefits of BSR Club's ClubRunner account, our website, and our Facebook page for members.
 
We look forward to working with Members to use these assets more efficiently, so they give life to our Club's purpose.