The Soul of Rotary

As Rotarians return home from the recently held Rotary International Convention in Houston, Texas, and as a new Rotary year unfolds, it may help to reflect on the real business of Rotary, which is The Ideal of Service, as summarized in THE OBJECT OF ROTARY.

Here are some points that I’d like to share with you. I’d be interested to know what you think:

Let’s begin with the point that service work, and the benefits that flow from it, are secondary to the goal of uplifting the Member to one who lives life with a servant leader’s attitude fully developed.

I think the transformation of people with a better approach to living is the soul of Rotary. I am making the point that being a Member of a Rotary Club is not the same as being a committed Rotarian.

As with many other institutions based upon ideals, ethics, and high standards, it is incumbent upon all Rotarians to periodically examine one’s conscience to determine if they are properly fulfilling their duties to Rotary. As one answers the questions I pose, I hope the Member would realize that there are many different and deeper aspects to Rotary. I mention this here to provide a jumping off point to answer the overall question implicit in this post’s title: What is the soul of Rotary?

I bet the word on your mind’s tongue is “Service.” But I disagree! If you take the time to examine your understanding of Rotary, I believe that service will be a component, but it is not the only important aspect of Rotary that I hope you will find coming to mind. In the wide world of Rotary, there is more to Rotary than “just” service. We were not founded to be a volunteer army, nor did we succeed so wildly as one. While community service came early to Rotary, it took many years to become what numerous Rotarians today see as the sole purpose of Rotary.

What was once “the ideal of service” has been shrunk to mean almost exclusively doing projects; in earlier times, service had a much broader meaning, a value embracing an approach to life that influenced how a person engaged with all fellow humans. If you do some reading of the earlier copies of The Rotarian on Google Books, you’ll find that there was a higher belief in what Rotary was: a method of transforming Man into a better version of himself, and known by the brand of Rotarian.

Rotary was foremost a Movement that held certain beliefs about what individuals in the emerging professional class should be like, and how they should view themselves in the world. The Rotary Club was seen as the setting for this transformation. The regular meetings, where attendance was prioritized, and humanitarian projects that were carried out provided the cultural reinforcement that would enable the conversion to this better Man. This person approached all aspects of life - professional, family, and community - as a servant leader with the purposeful intention of improving all that one came into contact with.

There is an important distinction to be made. Service is seen as both a fundamental mindset of this enlightened man and as a necessary tool to achieve this conversion. The point is that service work, and the benefits that flowed from it, are secondary to the goal of uplifting the Member to one who lives life with this servant leader’s attitude fully developed. I think the transformation of people with a better approach to living is the soul of Rotary. This is what the Rotary Movement is all about.

If we move the focus away from this core belief, what do we have? If filling the needs of others is all that Rotary does, as worthy as that is, it is a service organization like so many others. We may help neighbors and strangers in their lives, but what will we have done to make the Member a truly inspired person? As so many Rotarians have witnessed, when that switch gets thrown, when that light burns bright, when that new relationship is fully embraced, when that Rotarized Rotarian emerges, we have a different and better individual whose ability to improve others’ lives dramatically increases. If you don’t have “Rotarians,” you have nothing. They are the soul of Rotary!

The problem today is that, at least internationally, it used to be that by Clubs doing their individually inspired good works - through Project Grants, for example - we made people better Rotarians, and that was the main point! The genius of the Movement was that, perhaps unconsciously, it was about transforming the doers through service, with the benefits to recipient’s secondary. I fear that focus has been changed by official RI.

Since FutureVision there is a demonstrable shift in emphasis to a corporate charity doing fewer, larger projects, that have bigger, more publicly visible results, but engage less Rotarians and their Clubs. The service work is now the most important aspect (if you leave aside the cynical possibility that PR for The Rotary Foundation is actually the point…). I’m sure many will say that this is how it should be, that the point should be how well we do the service and maximize the benefit.

But I think that if we lose the transformative power of involving as many individual Rotarians as possible, we will ultimately stop making enough Rotarians. The goose and the golden egg tale comes to mind. Having a Member or two in a Club come up with an idea, then engage their Club with it, and then reach out across the world to other Club Level Rotarians to collaborate with to achieve the project is the magic sauce. People connecting in service is what transforms an individual.

Increasingly, at least on the global stage, more Rotarians are engaged as fund raisers only, and this will become a dead end. While there are amazing people who embrace the work of fundraising, many do not enjoy this activity and perform it reluctantly, or only in a supportive fashion at an event. This cannot be the soul of Rotary! Yet, it seems that is the path TRF/RI leadership is taking. If continued, it will hollow out the Movement. If we lose the focus of making the doers Rotarized Rotarians and replace it with a sole concentration on the project and its beneficiaries, we will have forfeited the very thing that makes Rotary what it is. We will have lost our soul.

Fellow Rotarians, what do you think? Jimmy Cura

About the Writer

"Fray Jimmy" is a schooled educator, professional manager, and public communicator. He has served at the helm of various government institutions and private corporations. Jimmy is an active Rotarian of 38 years. He served as president of the Rotary Club of Rizal West in 1984-85 and, later, as Governor of Rotary International District 3830 in 2005-2006. He is a Paul Harris Fellow and multiple donor of The Rotary Foundation. Jimmy is a frequent speaker and resource person in meetings, conferences, and seminars in or outside the Philippines. He has written many articles on Rotary topics and contemporary concerns. Jimmy has been married to Luz V. Cura for more than 40 years. They are blessed with three children—PJ, James, and Claudine.