I hope all of you had a relaxing Labor Day Weekend! Thank you to everyone who participated in reorganizing our committees and developing goals and action plans for the upcoming year. You’ll hear more about these efforts in the coming months. One major change we’re proposing is the introduction of a corporate membership category. Don Norton spoke about the corporate membership idea at Club Assembly in August. We will soon ask the Board and membership for permission to amend our bylaws to allow for this membership category. I don’t want to steal Don’s thunder so I’ll let him share more details later. I would like to thank Don as well as Steve Carnes for their leadership in developing guidelines for the corporate membership category. I would also like to thank Don Goff for agreeing to help us recruit corporate members. Adding a corporate membership category should help us achieve our goal of increasing membership over the next several years. We hope you agree! Of course, we still need to recruit Rotarians the “old-fashioned” way as well. We recently added one new member (Mosharraf Hossain) and I have heard about four other potential members that are interested in joining Rotary. I am excited and energized seeing our club slowly grow!
Increasing membership is great but we need to continue to offer weekly programs, service projects, and other opportunities that engage our members. September is our “athletics” month; thanks to Mylo Hellickson, we are fortunate to have many of the SDSU coaches, players, and athletic staff present at our weekly meetings. This program is very popular among Rotarians and for good reason! It’s a perfect time to invite a friend or colleague who enjoys SDSU sports to one of our meetings. We also are hosting two international exchange groups in September from Australia and Denmark. We have excellent tours and events lined up for these international guests. I am sure none of them know anything about Brookings but when they leave, I am confident they’ll come away with great memories of their time here! Thanks to everyone who has agreed to host our international visitors. September is going to be a busy and fun month! I look forward to sharing in these activities with each and every one of you.
Yours in Rotary,
Michael Gonda