Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club

Best Darn Club in the World

M³VC

President Update – 14th May 2018

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Introduction – The Home Straight:

During the Retreat at the Icicle Resort in Leavenworth, there was a moment when it dawned on me that we have some truly passionate past presidents in our club.  More importantly, many of them were present at the Retreat to play their role in helping to shape the future of our club for Rotary Year 2018-19, when Chris Boland steps up to take the mantel of President for the BBRC.  We are indeed a lucky club to have such loyalty from this cohort of esteemed Rotarians.  A group that I will be thrilled to join in the not too distant future.  My hope is that I can also hold the same passion and commitment to Rotary as these past presidents demonstrate regularly.

We have also completed our major fund raiser for the club.  An effort that the majority of our members were involved with in helping to deliver a success on the day.  My thanks to Chris Boland and his team for coordinating the many areas that are involved with meeting the promise of the All in for Autism 5K/10K event this year.  The final numbers are still being tallied, but I think it is safe to say that we will have improved on last year’s race and this allows us to plan for another year in support of our community service projects.  Just marvelous!

As a club, we have accomplished a lot this year in the areas that matter: supporting our communities locally and internationally through service; making our commitment to the RI Foundation; told our story to others; changing the governance of our club; and delivered on our commitments to increasing membership.  It should come as no surprise that our club has been successful in meeting the goals set by RI President, Ian Riseley, to secure the Presidential Citation for this year.  My congratulations to each of you, through your service above self, in helping secure this recognition for the club.

Tell Our Rotary Story:

We have met our goal for postings on the website and social media channels for this Rotary year with 673 postings against a goal of 500.  We have seen six stories published about our club in the local press, which allowed us to meet our goals.  Our followers have increased across Facebook (336), Twitter (750) and Linkedin (97), which continues to help us increase our reach across the community – I hope that each of you will also follow our club across these services.

We picked up four press articles, predominantly on the race, but one from Antigua as well:

The great thing about the race articles is that we only submitted one release and the other outlets picked up our event through the buzz.  This is something we can continue to build on for next year.

Grow Membership:

We are on track for adding ten new members to our club’s membership this year.  We set a goal of securing one new member for each month of the Rotary year.  It is an ambitious goal and we are only two new members shy of reaching it!  That is amazing.

Our club is currently at 90 members.  Our two most recent inductees are Caitlin Devaney and Kevin Klustner.  I hope that you have all taken the opportunity to welcome them into the fold and get them engaged in some of our projects.  I know that they are both ready for the challenge.

This being said, we have seen some members depart from the club as their circumstances and needs have changed.  I am sorry to say that we have had say good-bye to the following members: Joellen Monson, Lenny Lutes, Paul Osborn, Dan Sullivan and Chris LeRoux.  They were all wonderful Rotarians and we wish them well in their journeys outside of our club.

We also completed our work with approving the new membership categories: Family, Young Leader and Corporate.  This will allow us to pursue other avenues for expanding our reach and engaging our community in a manner that supports our mission.  I am excited for our future possibilities as a result of these changes to our membership categories.

Our membership committee continues to find ways to improve our onboarding processes and make sure we have our new members quickly engaged with our club’s activities.  It is this willingness to not stay still and to find new ways in which we can make our new member experience second to none.  Please thank Tim Leahy and his team for the wonderful work that they have accomplished in our membership recruiting and onboarding this year.

Retreat:

Dennis Newell, Chuck Kimbrough and John Schwager took up the challenge to lead the effort in organizing our Retreat at the Icicle Resort in Leavenworth this month.  It was by all measures a success.  We had wonderful opportunities for fellowship (wine tasting, golfing, dinner and gaming), while still finding time to participate in a planning session for Chris Boland’s Presidential year.  The ideas, passion and desire to keep our club’s ethos alive was apparent to all who participated in the Retreat.  My gratitude to all members of the Retreat planning committee is beyond measure.

We have received the majority of surveys back from the participants and they were overwhelming positive about the experience.  We will be using the feedback from this survey to help us plan for next year’s Retreat, which is now a requirement of the club’s bylaws.  Our President-Elect Nominee Designate (to be chosen) will own this responsibility each year going forward.  This is good news for the club and its membership.  It is my hope that we will see our Retreat become the key component for engagement of our members in the planning of our clubs future activities.  I hope that more of you will be a part of this amazing event next year and beyond.

Closing:

A suggestion was made at the Retreat that the Annual President Report provided to the District Governor should be shared with the club membership.  To this end, I have attached it with this note, so each of you can reflect on the work accomplished over 2017-18.  I think you will agree that we have been a busy club, in many areas, and it is thank to you and other members for helping to translate ideas into action – more importantly, this is our story at the BBRC.  Please share it with others!

President Update – 11th February 2018

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Introduction:

I have just returned from the slopes, after skiing this Sunday, and enjoyed a thoroughly wonderful day, where the weather was brilliant and the trails were in pretty good shape.  Add to this the fact that their weren’t too many people on the slopes letting you move quickly up to the start of each run on fast moving lift queues.  A well-oiled machine was in effect to make this an awesome day!

As I reflect on the past three months, since my last communication to you, it is with some pleasure that the same can be said for our club.  We are experiencing improved engagement, as measured by attendance, by our members.  We are also seeing continued growth in our membership.  In some ways, our club is also becoming a well-oiled machine, which is best illustrated by the charts below:

We are seeing an encouraging trend that is reflective our strategic focus defined in our M3 Vision, where we are renewing our focus on mission and membership engagement.  As we are only just embarked on what is a 3-year strategy, then I think it is good to see such early progress and my thanks to all members for their support.

In the last six months, our board has been diligently working on areas that is putting in place a foundation that will support our club’s ability to deliver on the M3 Vision.  I want to acknowledge and thank the board for their active involvement as we have looked to strengthen the Club’s governance and the extra burden this has placed on them.

Here are some of the noteworthy changes that have happened in the first half of our Rotary year:

  • The first half of this Rotary year has been focused on putting in the necessary tools and controls to support the governance of the club. This includes some considerable effort on the part of Ann Norman to make sure all of our club records are digitized on Dropbox.
  • We have also established better practices with respect to our communications through the use of our Microsoft tools and thanks to Paul Osborn we now have role-specific email aliases. This allows us to track all communications in support of succession between our club officers.
  • We established the M3 Visioning working group, who delivered on their first goal of updating on our club by-laws, which our club approved last Friday. We will be further optimizing our club’s organization under the M3 strategy for the remainder of the Rotary year, which will set us on path for success for securing our club’s future within the community.  I want to acknowledge Wendi Fischer leadership in this area, especially in making sure we deliver on our promises for this Rotary Year.
  • We are signed up for the district initiative to support the Sustainable Rotary Club project, which is a program that has clubs committing to growing its membership for three years. We have submitted our M3 Vision and we will be using this as a control mechanism to support the execution of the plan for the next three years.

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:

We have almost met our goal for postings on the website and social media channels for this Rotary year with 495 postings against a goal of 500.  This helps us to communicate our story within the community, while showing the energy and dynamism of the membership.  We are seeing our reach being extended as others, including our members, Like and Retweet items with the result that our audience is also growing.  Please continue with this support.

Our relationship with the Bellevue Reporter continues to deliver articles on our clubs activities.  We continue to get stories published and we have plans for upcoming activities:

We continue to look for support from members in our marcom efforts, so for those of you who want to engage with social media or work with our press campaigns please reach out to Paul Osborn.  We also want to encourage members to help with promoting the club’s activities by taking pictures and publishing them to our social media sites or website.  It is easy and quick to do; and allows us to quickly Tell our Story to the community.

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:

  • New Generations: We supported our Rotaractors with their Sock project over Christmas, and we were able to help them with the fund raising by helping to secure $500 courtesy of Clint Merriman and Insperity.
  • Thanksgiving Turkey funding: We raised more than $6,250 over our necessary goal. We used the additional funds raised to support RFH and to recognize Michel Carter within RFH.
  • Issaquah Food Bank New Box Truck Project ($78,500): Our campaigning with district allowed us to secure the full $12,000 match. This is added to funds from BBRC of $24,500; Sammamish RC of $2,000; Issaquah RC of $1,000; Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank of $9,000; and a promise of $30,000 from King County (although it will be met from other sources if not delivered on).
  • Every Rotarian Every Year: We achieved 100% contribution from each of you in support of the RI Foundation. We are forecasting an increase of 8% over last year’s contribution, which will put us at approx. $33K.  We also saw a 10% increase in individual member contributions, which will place us around $363 per member.  This places us in second place within the District for both Annual Giving Totals and Per Capita Giving.  Congratulations to everyone in the club for making a difference!  We are clearly punching above our weight.
  • We continue to see a really strong attendance at RFH each month, as Colleen Turner has made sure to get us engaged with this monthly activity. Laura Cosacchi has also made sure that our Interactors are strong contributors to the RFH work parties, which is a wonderful way for us to partner with this young group of Rotarians.

 Grow Membership:

We have grown our club membership to 92!  This places BBRC in second place for membership growth and we are only one member shy of the fastest club in District 5030.  Please pass on your congratulations to Tim Leahy and the membership committee, while continuing to bring more guests to our meetings.

Congratulations to Mark Buick and John Hall for being our newest additions to the member rolls.  We continue to see more guests coming to our meetings and we are actively pursuing some of them in conversations about joining the club.  Well done to everyone who has brought in guests to experience our unique brand.

We also had a wonderful Black and White Wine Evening for the annual party this year.  It was oversold, which was a good problem to have although we did have to turn some of our members down due to the room restrictions.  We will make sure to have a bigger room for next year.  Thank you to Carmela and the Fellowship committee for making this a great evening, including the wine tasting.

A big announcement is that we are going to have our Club Retreat this year.  It will happen in May, and the plan is to hold the Retreat at Icicle Village Resort in Leavenworth.  Dennis Newell has kindly taken the lead on this effort for our club and he has an active committee working on the details.  Make sure to keep 4-5 May open.  It is sure to be an event that cannot be missed!

The M3 Vision working group is now starting to work on 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:

We have launched our new banner for the Paul Harris Fellows this past Friday, after the 100% EREY announcements.  This is in keeping with our banners being displayed at our meetings.  To aid us in making sure that the banners are setup before each meeting, we have secured Corey’s services in the morning in assisting us with this effort.

Chuck Kimbrough has been actively involved in promoting the Adoption Party across Rotary far and wide.  It is great that he has been able to leverage the BBRC brand and banners in this effort.  It is great to see the branding used so effectively.

Our next big effort is the All in for Autism event.  Not only is this our biggest fund raiser; it is also our largest platform for promoting the club and leveraging our brand across the community.  Chris Boland is going to be looking for our support in this project and please heed his calls to action, so we can make sure it is both successful in raising funds and our visibility.

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.  I hope you can continue to help us keep this well-oiled machine running at top notch!

President Update – 23rd October 2017

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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: 

  • New Generations: We have made regular contact with our Rotaractors and Interactors.  They are enthusiastic and keen to be involved with our club’s activities.  Please consider them for your upcoming projects. 
  • Kindering: were thrilled with our contribution to their cause this year.  They have been great partners in promoting us through their own network and acknowledged the leadership award we gave to Mimi Siegel. 
  • SOWA: they are also strong advocates for us through their channels and will continue to look for opportunities to work with us.  We can draw on their network for the Race next year. 
  • King County DSHS: with our Family Festival we have once again demonstrated how effective BBRC are at working with many different organizations to help children and teens find their forever family.   
  • Bellevue City Parks & Recreation: we have partnered with them on two occasions through our Preserve Planet Earth projects.  Our most recent effort has allowed to plant over 94 trees, which is at least one tree for every member of the club.  Allowing us to do good in our community, while meeting the global challenge set out by RI’s President – Ian Riseley. 
  • District 5030: we have played our part in district events.  This includes supporting their fellowship events, the Peace Day Proclamation in Seattle, the Elk Farm visit, hosting our district governor and Rotary First Harvest. 
  • Rotary International: we have actively used RIs new promotional materials in club meetings, promoted the World Polio Day Celebration (we will also have a BBRC presence at B&MGF live event – 10/24) and we are about to embark on our EREY program this coming November.  We have many other relationships with Rotary clubs through our joint projects and these continue to pay dividends around our activities to do good in our community and globally. 
  • Our conversations with Cascade Designs and others continues, while we find the right opportunities to successfully partner with each other.   

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? 

President Update – 27th August 2017

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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:

  • New Generations: Alex has been reaching out the Bellevue Boys & Girls club to see how we can better partner with them for the future.  This group has also been effective in staying close with Interact (thanks Laura), Rotaract (Alex and Chris), DECA (Paul) and RYLA (Madeline), which is a great way to make sure the next generation see the value of Rotary.
  • Thanks to Jenny Andrews, a connection was made with the Speerha Community (https://www.facebook.com/spreeha.org/) who are aligned in many ways with what we do at Rotary.  I am in contact with the chapter President and hope to find ways we can work together as part of our outreach to a wider audience in the community.
  • I met with Cascade Design and entered into a conversation with them to see how we can align with their good work in Global Health – with a particular emphasis on local education in the community around clean water for emergencies.  I know that Steve Roberts has also engaged with them for his Haiti project and I am sure there is more to come.
  • Naturally, we still have great connections with other partners and will continue to find ways to engage with them: Kindering, RFH, SOW and others

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.