Connecting Everyone to the Future
Maintaining Member Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Last updated March 27, 2020
We are living in rapidly changing environment that needs bold imaginative and timely interventions. What may be right today may well be wrong or different tomorrow so we need to be agile, responsive and willing to change as our communities need us more than ever before.
Rotary International is Monitoring the impact of the coronavirus (CONVID-19) outbreak on events and operations and has issued the following guidance note. Click link below.
As an International District we are closely monitoring the situation and also looking carefully at the advice offered by RI and both the Canadian and US authorities. Our Lead Team is meeting weekly and more frequently as necessary to ensure we can provide the optimum support to our members and clubs in these rapidly changing times.
In their efforts to maintain engagement during times when clubs have postponed or cancelled in-person meetings, projects or social events, we have developed this guide with ideas and strategies for Club Leaders to consider. The following is an offering of support, not a requirement. Club Leaders are encouraged to consult with their boards to assess and determine which strategies will be useful on the local level.
None of these strategies is a replacement for timely, transparent and regular communication with your members about your plans to continue modified operations throughout this time. Be sure that all committees and leaders in your club are equipped with consistent messaging to minimize confusion to your members and to streamline communications about changes as they arise. Consider sending brief weekly updates to your members or provide a timeline for when decisions will be reviewed and modified if necessary.
Have a great strategy that’s working for you? Send details to rotary6330@gmail so it may be added to this guide and shared with others.
Stay safe and stay connected so Together we may flatten the curve.
Tony Sheard
DG 6330
Acknowledgment: This page has been created in response to COVID 19 by Tony Sheard, Colin and Susan Macdonald with input from Richard Fox DG 7850 and District 6690 Membership Chair Membership Chair Jenny Stotts on the basis of Adopt Adapt Improve.
Quick Glance
Virtual Meetings
Learn to Zoom
Share ideas and experiences
Learning Centre
Engagement through Social Media
Engagement through Service (from Afar) including ideas
Creative engagement strategies
District Event Status
Government Guidance
Rotary’s role in battling the Coronavirus
Resources: Useful links
Virtual Meetings with Zoom – The “New Normal”
We are offering the Zoom Service to ALL clubs. The cost will be fully funded by the District and this service will be made available initially until October 31, 2020 which is next license renewal. All clubs are strongly encouraged to take up this FREE offer.
To become a Zoomer apply for your Host Account by sending an email to
rotary6330@gmail.com indicating that you would like to take advantage of this free offer - including:
- the club name,
- the key contact for the club,
- the email address for the account.
The key contact person (and email address) must be prepared to take responsibility for setting up and scheduling the club Zoom meetings, and should be prepared to learn the little bit that is required to schedule and host the meetings.
Learn to Zoom…
For the clubs that have accepted the free ZOOM Conferencing offer, here are some tutorials for you and to share with your club:
How to join a meeting or how how to host a meeting click here
Already a Zoomer? Here are some
Tips & Tricks for better Video Meetings
Tips for hosting a “Virtual Meeting”
- Consider shortening the length of the virtual meeting to make it more feasible for members to “tune in.”
- Do keep your fellowship activities if they can easily migrate online (for example, “getting to know you” activities, interesting speakers, and happy bucks/dollars)
- Avoid taking up “video time” with elements of your meeting that would be better shared in writing such as basic announcements or upcoming dates to note – consider sending those in a follow up email once the virtual meeting concludes
- check out Rotary resources on virtual meetings
As well as using Zoom for Club and Committee Meetings, think differently. Why not hold a virtual coffee morning meeting or a virtual happy hour meeting just for social interaction? – Just have a chat. Think you are at Tim Horton’s or Starbucks or your local bar but you are connected from the comfort of your own home
Less Interactive – There are other tools that are still incredibly useful and may be the perfect fit, but don’t require that everyone log in at a specific time, which could be the perfect level of flexibility for your club. The suggestions below range from social media tools to project management and communication tools.
Share Ideas and Experiences
Please share your experiences, ideas on how your club and community is coping with the situation on the District Facebook Page to help us ALL learn.
Visit our Shared Ideas and Experiences page
District Wide Zoom Forum Mondays at 7 pm
...your opportunity to connect
Each Monday evening, we will be hosting a District wide forum to share experiences starting on Monday March 16th at 7 pm to 8 pm. Join us for the latest update so we may share ideas and experiences. Just click on this link on Monday evening. Weekly meetings will now sent by email invitation.
Learning Centre
Time on your hands? Why not brush up on your Rotary knowledge and skills from the comfort and safety of your own home.
Of course, the BEST way to engage members is the same in-person or on-line! Get creative with ways to keep the spirit of service alive with your members!
Engagement through Social Media Tools
Social Media is a great tool for engaging members and the general community every day. Clubs can optimize and concentrate their social media channels as a resource to bolster engagement during the hiatus from in-person contact. Many of these strategies can be used once you return to business as usual, so this may prove to be a pilot for your club.
Fellowship
Use social media prompts to mimic the fellowship your members enjoy during your meetings. Included among the resources are social media assets that you may use to start these online conversations. Here are few examples:
- What are you reading?
- Picture Contest: Sunrises
- Kindness is Contagious
Social Media Takeovers
Allow various members to “take the reins” on your social channels and let them use pictures and stories to share how they’re dealing with the changes to daily living brought on by the pandemic. Here is a useful guide:
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-takeovers/
Migrating Meeting Activities to Social Media
- "Getting to know you" activities like Hot Seat or Member Profiles
- Happy Bucks or Happy Dollars online (sample social assets are included in resources)
- Asks members or “guest speakers” to record video presentations to promote through social channels. Have a member with an interesting hobby like beekeeping? Any business owners getting creative during the pandemic? Have members who are passionate about particular service projects? Ask them to share a self-recorded video!
- These can be recorded simply using a cell phone. Try to limit video recordings to 5-6 minutes maximum.
- Remember to write engaging posts that encourage members and guests to interact with the content.
- **Facebook Live is a great tool for short presentations featuring your members with interesting hobbies, because the audience can ask questions in real-time that the presenter can answer on the spot.
Engagement through Service (from Afar)
Community Needs Assessment
Once you have connected your members turn your attention to how Rotary can help in your community.
- Consider carrying out an accelerated simple
community needs assessment to see how Rotary can best respond. Our motto is
Service Above Self. Reach out to your local Municipality, Social Services, Schools, Health organizations, Chamber of Commerce, BIA, etc. to see what help they need. Remember those businesses that have donated and sponsored Rotary in the past, how are they coping now? These are challenging times that need bold imaginative and caring responses over the coming months.
Click here for guidance on carrying out a needs study.
- Check-in with local organizations to see how they’re doing and if they need any assistance. - Be aware of community needs. As many of you have observed, if schools do close, many children will lose their primary source of food. If COVID-19 cases increase, local first responders and health care facilities will be strained and may be in need of support. Challenging times bring an increase in needs (not just for toilet paper), and we are great at serving community needs.
- Check-in on your neighbours, especially those in the at-risk populations (the elderly and the immunocompromised) and see how they’re doing. Help out when and where you can. Physical distance may be healthy at this time, but social isolation can be deadly as it contributes to depression and allows people in need to fall through the cracks. Be a good neighbour and a good friend.
- AND don't forget to take care of yourself and your families – pay attention to your physical and mental health. Ask for help if you need it. And even if, like me, you are one of those “it won’t happen to me” types, try to remember that your health and the public health are interrelated. While you may feel fine, you might just be carrying something harmful to others. If we stay connected and lend a hand where we can, the worst that will happen is that our communities will survive a trying global pandemic. The best that can happen is that this all passes us by and we grow stronger as Rotarians and as a community.
Donate
As always, you can ask members to donate to The Rotary Foundation (hint: use the array of Rotary assets including videos to promote; all available on My Rotary). Other considerations include initiating “friendly competitions” with other clubs to see which can raise the most money for a particular focus area or fund to earn “bragging rights” (or maybe the “losing” club has to provide the manual labor for the winning club’s future project). Get creative and use this opportunity to bolster promotion of opportunities for Rotarians to give.
The Rotary Foundation is only taking Online Donations at this time. Here are two documents to guide you through the Online Donation Process.
Service ideas
(If you have better different or better ideas please email us at rotary6330@gmail.com so we can add them to this list)
- Coloured Care Card Alert System – Householders display a Coloured Card in their window or on their door to indicate GREEN ‘I am OK”, ORANGE “I need assistance” RED “I need urgent assistance”. To enable people to have a system other than online/social media of advising they need help. A simple solution to reach out to community members who may not have access to online social networking and where volunteers can take an active roll to check up on friends, and neighbours or people who do not have many community connections.
- A variation on "Pay it Forward": For example, Pay for a meal for home delivery from a local Restaurant for some one less fortunate or send a Rose or Bunch of Flowers to cheer someone up.
- Online Art Competition or Story Writing Competition. The online contest will encourage children to use their imaginations and connect with each other through this challenging time and provide parents a focused activity to provide them with. Entries will be submitted to a generic email address and uploaded to a photo album to a website page, facebook and posted to instagram. A modest prize of say $50 - $100 weekly prize, in gift cards to local restaurants for takeout or local stores think may work best and also support struggling business in the community (half a cash card for the child, and half a gift card to a local restaurant so they could order take out etc.)
- Use your video conferencing creatively, think differently why not hold a virtual coffee morning meeting or a virtual happy hour meeting just for social interaction – Just have a chat. Think you at Tim Horton’s or Starbucks or your local bar but you are connected in the comfort of your own home.
- Offer to book meetings on your new Zoom Account to other community organizations. For example your local PROBUS Club or other non for profit community organisations to help them stay connected.
- Why not donate a one year subscription to Zoom to another non for profit organisation to help them connect through this difficult time.
- Choose a local charity and ask all members to highlight it using their social channels. Choose a new charity each week! This is a great way to leverage the influence of Rotarian leaders to elevate causes that matter to your local community (and it might even sprout a future project collaboration!).
- Coordinate with local hospitals or nursing homes for members to send cards or letters to combat loneliness from isolation in facilities that have limited visitors.
- Ask members to make blankets for My Very Own Blanket or similar organizations.
- Challenge members to look through their homes and sort items that can be donated to charity. Once it is safe to do so, hold a group donation day to a local charity thrift store (remember to take pictures!).
- Ask members to record themselves reading children’s books and post through your club’s social channels for parents to share with their children for “alt-tv time” during school closures.
- Start a gift card drive. Ask members to purchase gifts cards (bonus points if it’s a local small business) and then mail them along with a note from the Rotarian to organizations that would be able to put them to good use.
Creative Engagement Strategies
Chain Letters – Start a good old-fashioned-chain letter to engage members. See resources below for a template of an easy example to distribute via email.
Pen Pals – Develop a relationship with another club near or far to start “Rotary Pen Pals.” See the sample invitation letter. This is a great way to strike up a relationship with someone you’ve met at an International Convention or a District Conference. Invite the partnering club to share mailing addresses for their members and then assign each one to a member of your own club to start exchanging letters.
”Crash” an E-Club! Or Passport Club Meeting – Share information about e-clubs with your members. Some e-clubs hold “virtual meetings” and some include online content. Anyone can peruse the websites of e-clubs and get inspired for other ways to maintain engagement without in-person meetings (they are the experts, after all!)
Board Buddies – Assign each of your board members (and possibly committee chairs) to 5-6 club members and ask them to maintain regular contact to foster engagement
District Event Status
District Conference June 19-21,
The 2020 Conference Team are closely monitoring the situation and will develop contingency plans to cover a variety of scenarios to minimize the disruption to our operation and calendar whilst ensuring the health and safety of our members.
The District Conference 2020 will meet on March 24 to review the current situation. Options under consideration include full cancellation, postponement or offering some form of virtual conference.
PETS/Leadership Exchange - Postponed - see updates below
The current situation of a global COVID-19 pandemic requires us to seriously consider the potential risks to Rotarians at upcoming District gatherings. After careful and deliberate consideration, we believe that caution is in the best interest of our membership. Therefore, it has been determined that we will not gather in Sarnia for our Leadership Exchange (formerly known as President Elect Training and District Training Assembly) on April 3rd and 4th 2020.
We have cancelled all Hotel Bookings and Training Session Registrations.
The leadership exchange was designed to provide the opportunity to gather together, talk informally, and share ideas for both Rotaractors and Rotarians and grow Rotary!
Our plan is to have multiple Leadership Exchange sites in your area on May 30th with Rotaractors and Rotarians coming together and broadcasting from a remote location.
More information to come as we adjust to our new reality.
Rotary Youth Exchange Program,
The District 6330 Youth Exchange committee working closely with Central States Youth Exchange, the YEO's and the students (and their parents) to offer them the best advice available as the situation unfolds. Based on current information and government advisories regarding travel, we feel that it is safer for students to stay in place in their host countries (travel appears to be much riskier than not travelling). However, if parents want their child to return home, we are working with them to make it happen. Additionally, some countries/districts have decided to end exchanges early this year due to local circumstances which is also resulting in some students being returning home early.
Letter dated March 15th, from Brent Sheppard, Chair Central States Youth Exchange
RYLA Rotary District 6330 Seminar for Tomorrow's Leaders - Cancelled for 2020
Rotary Leadership Institute - Postponed
We would like to re-schedule this later in the fall but will monitor and advise if/or when.
Rotary Friendship Exchange - Postponed
The incoming Friendship Exchange from South Africa has been postponed to June or July 2021
Rotary International Convention in Honolulu, Hawaii - Cancelled
A message from President, Rotary International, 2019-2020 Mark Daniel Maloney regarding the decision
can be viewed here.Government Guidance
The latest official guidance from the Canadian and US Governments is available on the links below:
We will keep updating this note so it is the single information source as the situation unfolds.
Keep washing your hands and remember GREET with a SMILE not a Handshake!
Yours in Rotary Service
Tony Sheard
DG 6330
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A message from Rotary International President Mark Maloney and President Elect Holger Knaack
Rotary’s Role in Battling Coronavirus
Dear Fellow Rotarian,
The COVID-19 coronavirus is affecting every aspect of our lives in real time, and this puts Rotarians in an unfamiliar place. As People of Action, we are most comfortable when we are fully engaged in the world – moving freely, meeting openly, and offering helping hands. These are very difficult times for people who, like us, are at our best when we are learning, growing, and serving—together.
Useful Links & Resources
Attached Resources & Assets
- Social Media “Happy Bucks” Assets
Acknowledgment: This page has been created in response to COVID 19 by Tony Sheard, Colin and Susan with thanks to Richard Fox DG 7850 and District 6690 Membership Chair Membership Chair Jenny Stotts on the basis of Adopt Adapt Improve.
By Elizabeth Davis, Annual Giving Officer, Zone 24 East & Zone 32, Elizabeth.Davis@rotary.org
