Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club
Best Darn Club in the World
You are all invited to a special BBRC September Third Thursday!
When: 3rd Thursday (duh!), September 19th, 4:30 to 6:30 PM.
Where: The lake front home of Chris & Pam Monger, 304 W. Lake Sammamish Parkway NE in Bellevue.
Bring: A beverage to enjoy and perhaps an appetizer.
Note: both speedo and thong bathing attire is discouraged.
RSVP to Robin Callan or Chris Monger if you will attend.
Introduction:
Since my last missive, it is wonderful to see the involvement of members in bringing our M³ Vision to life for our club. With this in mind, I want to provide my update to our members on how we are progressing in delivering on our Back to Basics strategy.
The number of members wanting to participate in our morning meetings has made my decisions around the agenda tougher. There is only a finite amount of time in the mornings, and some members have to be turned away or delayed. This is a good problem to have and it helps reinforce one of the cornerstones of our club’s appeal. By improving our experience in the morning meetings, we can raise the energy and enthusiasm of our members, and those we want to attract.
This leads me to observe how our club is seeing a good and healthy influx of guests and many are coming in from you telling our story – keep it up. Many of you may have heard me say it: “if we cannot tell our story, then who will?” It is critical that we keep telling our story to those we meet and encourage them attend the meetings. We have calling cards that we can hand out to invite new prospects to have a breakfast on us – Chris Boland’s point about us “not running out of food” is on point, so let us make sure none of it is wasted.
Our social media and PR is helping with promoting our outreach that helps us tell our story to more people within our community. We regularly posting on our website, social media channels and getting picked up by the local media. We need to be more proactive in this area, and with the ease of access on our technology platform we have an opportunity to all become comfortable with using it to tell our story.
All in all, this is good progress and helps to explain why our club seems to be the fastest in membership growth within our district! With this in mind, let me provide a quick update on the four areas of our “Back to Basics” strategy – Tell our Story; Engage our Community; Grow our Membership and Improve our Brand.
Tell Our Rotary Story:
I have been tracking our postings on the website and social media channels for this Rotary year and we are making good progress against our goal of 500 postings – we currently stand at 304 postings, so we are clearly on track to meet the goal. This is great outreach and our followers are increasing on both Facebook and Twitter accounts, especially as we remain active in our postings.
We now have a new relationship in place at the Bellevue Reporter, who has been very supportive in publishing our press releases – here are the two that were published:
One of the calls to action that I do have is for someone in the club to become our PR/Media relationship manager with the press. This is going to be a critical role for us in the next few months as we promote the Race and other activities in the club. This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to learn how to work with the media and create buzz that will translate to your own business. Either let Paul Osborn or me know if you want to take this on.
You only need to go to our website to see the activity around our club to appreciate how much more we are doing to promote the work of our club. This being said, we do need to find a way to get more support around taking pictures and publishing them to our Facebook or Twitter account. This is an easy thing to do and the more we publish, then the wider our reach with outside parties and the broader community. The good news is that we have cross-linked all of our accounts, so if you post to one then you are posting to all.
Engage our Community:
The outreach with our community continues. This helps us get noticed and also allows us to build sustaining relationships for the long term. Notably, we have been active in these areas:
Grow Membership:
We are continuing to trend positively in terms of membership and we have had five new members join the club this Rotary year. This puts us ahead by 2 against the goal we have set ourselves for one new member each month of Rotary Year 2017-18. This is a fantastic result that we want to continue with your support.
Keep inviting people to the meetings. Let them experience our vibrant club and the rich program that we have to offer. Our SAA will continue to encourage you to bring guests, although I believe that you will only be thrilled to do so without Curtis’s helping hand.
The M³ Vision working group is close to completing their work on the by-laws and new classifications of membership that will help us be more in tune with what we believe people are looking for from Rotary membership. It is our hope these changes will allow for younger professionals, family members and others pressed around our attendance restrictions to find ways that will allow them to be a part of our club.
The working group is to present their findings to our board shortly and then we will share with our membership. Our goal is to get these changes approved, so we can take quickly apply them in support of our club’s longer-term legacy in Bellevue.
Improve our Brand:
You will have noticed over the last three months that we are using Rotary’s new branding co-laterals in everything we do to help connect our own strategic plan with the bigger initiative being executed by Rotary International. We believe that we can share in the benefits that come from this effort and in partnering with RI we can remain consistent in our messaging and narrative.
We have been deliberate in tying our program back to Rotary themes each month and making sure that we take advantage of the opportunities these themes present. They allow us to tell our story across the service areas and with the things that matter in Rotary, whether this be New Generations, Community/Vocational Service or EREY. In structuring our activities in this way, we are enhancing and developing our product in such a manner that it will appeal to our members and future members. Being consistent in the approach will allow us to continually enhance and add value to our club membership – I hope you are seeing the difference.
We have also completed a lot of heavy lifting in the club administration, to allow for us to be nimbler around daily decisions. The board has set up Standard Operating Procedures that allows our Club Admin to handle more of the daily activities without direct board involvement. We have also, thanks to Ann Norman and others, setup our electronic records on Dropbox, where we now have a complete archive of all of our club documents and decisions. Furthermore, we had addressed some of the niggly regulatory reporting needs around our charitable status that will allow us to remain in good grace with the State. All of these activities, positions us well for better governance and execution as a club going forward.
We will continue to optimize our club’s organization, so that we can demonstrate our value to our members, new prospects and the community at a large. Our board and the M³ Vision working group are key into making sure we accomplish this during our current Rotary Year, so that the club can be ready to embrace the changes in 2018-19.
Closing:
Please keep your ideas coming through to me. I have been thrilled with the feedback and support so far from each of you. I continue to commit to each of you that we will bring value to your membership and involvement with BBRC. In return, I look to you to each find a way to make a difference – if not you, then who?
I wanted to send out a quick update with respect to the progress we are making our “Back to Basics” Strategy (also known as the M³ Vision). Our goal is to reach a level of sustainability in our club by refocusing on our Mission, growing our Membership and securing the Money that will help support our work in the community and beyond. We will accomplish this by aligning with Rotary’s brand changes and tell our BBRC story. This will allow us to share our lessons and, with demonstrated gains, we can inspire our club and others to be a part of the success – Together we can make a difference.
My update will be broken into four areas: Tell our Rotary Story, Engage our Community, Grow Membership, and Improve our Brand. Please refer to the Back to Basics action plan to refresh yourself on the details behind each of these areas. I hope to send out regular updates, so the club can see how we are doing in our pursuit of M³.
Tell Our Rotary Story:
We have made good progress in this area. Our PR Committee is executing on their plan to create more outreach through our social media. Paul Osborn is working hard to help make sure the club has the tools in telling our story through the website, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. The PR Committee is also working on tools to help us measure our effectiveness in communicating our stories to the wider community. Here are some great examples of this work:
The call to action for everyone in the club is to use participate in these mediums and help tell our story. Many of us our on social media and own mobile phones. Take advantage of these channels by taking pictures, so we can share them with the wider community. We will also be looking to all committee members to post updates on their activities to the website, so that interested parties can see what a dynamic club we have at the BBRC. Remember, if not you, then who will tell our story?
Engage our Community:
We have an opportunity to connect with others in our community. We need to do this to capture the opportunity presented by the changes in our area. We have made some encouraging progress in this regard:
Grow Membership:
We have started with great gusto in terms of membership this Rotary year. Since July we have inducted four new members and our plan is to try and bring in one new member each month. There is no reason why we should not all be actively seeking opportunities to bring other guests into our club and show them the opportunity of membership.
However, it is not just about bring in new members. It is about making sure we continually challenge ourselves to demonstrate the value of membership in Rotary. We do this through our activities and initiatives, where we work hard to enjoy our involvement to the fullest, by expressing love for the mission, calling people we care about and checking on how they are, being more forthright and strategic in our club’s activities, while learning from our mistakes and growing from these experiences.
This will make it much easier to tell our story to others, enjoy each other’s company in fellowship and develop the trust that will allow us to build strong, lasting relationships both personally and in business.
Improve our Brand:
By now you will have heard about our own effort to secure a sustainable future for our club. Morris Kremen, Chris Boland and I have committed to supporting our Back to Basics plan for the next three years. We recognize that it is critical for us to engage in the opportunity to make lasting change for the benefit of the club for many more generations that will follow us in the future.
We will achieve this by being more effective in directing the strategy and policy of our club through the board of directors (we have made a lot of changes in terms of organizing and optimizing the efforts of our board), where Ann Norman has led the charge to gather all of our club documents over the last 15 years and make sure we can access them through Dropbox (thanks to Paul Osborn for helping us with the technical transition). We are building discipline into the governance of the club and making sure this supports our plans for sustainability.
We have also launched the M³ Vision Committee (M³VC) to review all of our by-laws, club organization and activities to see how we can best optimize our organization for the future. This committee reports to me and will make recommendations to the board that will help us shape the club to the benefit of its membership. This group is headed up by Wendi Fischer and its members are: Dick Brown, Steve Lingenbrink, Desiree Yuzawa and Girish Bahtia. Please lend them your support as they work through the challenging portfolio of tasks ahead of them.
In closing, I want to thank all of you who have come to me with ideas, suggestions and thoughts about the future of the club. We all have an opportunity to make a difference in our club and, by doing so, I guarantee that you will very quickly see the value in your membership realized. Be the difference and embrace that opportunity.
Colleen Turner and the Pedersen clan were able to visit Elk Run Farm this past Saturday and get a first-hand look at a remarkable example of Rotary action right here in our area. Elk Run Farm, built on a former golf course, now grows and distributes vegetables for distribution to hungry families and individuals through the 12 members of the South King County Food Coalition.
After Elk Run Golf Course closed in 2014, Elk Run Farm was born on 4.5 acres of the former golf course. The urban farm project broke ground in October 2015 with support from South-end Rotary clubs and Rotary District 5030. Rotary First Harvest, through its Harvest Against Hunger program, has placed AmeriCorps VISTA and National Civilian Community Corps resources to develop the farm. The farm started harvesting vegetables in September 2016 and continues to operate its mission, while providing these benefits:
• Produce and distribute roughly 60,000 lbs. of fresh, organic produce to the South King County emergency food system, increasing the food security of some of our region’s most vulnerable residents.
• Host a field trip program and introduce thousands of pre-k through high school students to hands on organic farming and gardening, nutrition, and environmental stewardship.
• Host employment training programs for youth, elders, immigrant and refugee communities, and other groups with higher than average barriers to employment or those experiencing food insecurity.
• Introduce elements of local food system economic growth into Kentlake, Kentwood, and the future Tahoma High Schools as well as the community learning center campus planned for the land across the street from the potential farm site.
• Improve the public safety of the area in which the farm is located through community stewardship, increased eyes on the property, and community connection with the land.
The farm has become a showcase for organic, community based farming, and recently received an award from the King Conservation District and King County Executive (and fellow Rotarian) Dow Constantine for its work. To learn more about the farm and opportunities to support this endeavor please click on the yellow button to be taken to their Facebook page.
Name: Paul Cunnington
Description: Unintentional Economist & Digital Consultant
What I have to offer fellow Rotarians and friends:
I help grow companies!
What Rotarians can offer in support or good introductions for me:
If any of these areas I mentioned resonate with you or someone you know, let’s have a conversation!
Welcome to the BBRC (Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club) Vocational Minute
(This will be read during a meeting, then posted in our Club’s Vocational Database)
Name: Sheldon Sweeney
Description: Financial Advisor for Comprehensive Planning, I went to college at the California Maritime Academy and earned a Bachelor’s Degree. My industry exams taken and passed include: Series 7, 63, 65, Life and Disability insurance.
What I have to offer fellow Rotarians and friends :
These may not be areas of concern for you, but do any of these concerns sound familiar for people you know?
Something unique about my practice is that I market to women. Did you know that the current statistic in our industry (Financial Advisors*) is that upon the death of the male spouse 75% of women leave their Financial Advisor and seek someone else. (*I must say that I do not think this statistic holds true for my fellow advisors in Rotary, however it is a shocking statistic in our industry)
What Rotarians can offer in support or good introductions for me:
If any of these areas I mentioned resonate with you or someone you know, I’d love to have a conversation.
Hi All, I send out the requests for proposals last month and they have come back. I need some readers that would be willing to take a look at them with a critical eye and score them with the District Grant matching criteria in mind.
I have scanned all of the proposals in to pdf and have a checklist to help the readers evaluate them. You can probably read them on your iPhone
I will give first priority to those who have been on the committee in the past. It seems like a lot of people have gone on vacation and are not in town for some reason.
Let me know if you are interested in participating.
I would like to get these turned around in a week or so.
Meeting called for March 4, 2016 at 8;35 in the bar after the meeting.
Steve Peters
speters@pfpllc.com
425-830-7022
Our current exchange student, Ariadna Paraira from Barcelona, is doing very well as a junior at Sammamish High School and will be staying with Steve and Sarah Hayne until the end of December. She will be making a short presentation to the Club this coming Friday, October 17th.
As a Committee, our biggest challenge is finding two additional host families for January through March and April through June. On September 29th, Sarah Hayne, Tanya Franzen-Garrett and I gave a brief presentation at the Sammamish High PTSA meeting, where we distributed a flier: Host Families Wanted. Catherine Smith, PTSA leader, also sent the flier to the parents of the class of 2016 and Cathy Habib has included it in the Sammamish High School Totem eNews.
I was told at the PTSA meeting that the Rotary Youth Exchange program was the only international exchange program that has been actively promoted at Sammamish High.
To date, I haven’t received any inquiries from parents with kids at Sammamish High about hosting Ariadna. My next move is to ask Catherine Smith to publicize the program among parents with kids in the classes of 2015, 2017 and 2018.
Laura Adams has graciously offered to be Ariadna’s host Mom from January through March in the event we don’t find another host family. She is also responsible for Ariadna’s schedule of activities. Thank you, Laura.
Three weeks ago, I helped chaperone all six of Rotary District 5030’s international exchange students (Ariadna, two girls from Italy, one girl from Finland, one girl from France and a boy from Germany) on a memorable trip to Yellowstone for their inbound orientation. Although none of the students knew each other before the trip, they were best friends after a week of bonding, exploring majestic Yellowstone, photographing wildlife and helping with meal preparation. I was with them again on Saturday, boxing apples at Rotary First Harvest.