Minnesota Rotarian Jo Gluck Bailey says 2007 was kind to the Rotary clubs of Mankato and North Mankato, with each club recruiting 15 new members. That’s no small feat in this day and age, but it didn’t happen by accident.

From April through July, Bailey coordinated a public relations campaign for the clubs, which together had received a US$5,000 Public Relations Grant from Rotary International. Using public service advertising materials produced by Rotary and localized with new content, the clubs ran a series of radio and television spots that generated “well over $10,000 in exposure for Rotary in our shared market,” Bailey says.

The ads directed viewers and listeners to a Web site that offered more information about both Mankato Rotary clubs. Bailey credits the campaign as a major factor in recruiting the 30 new club members. “We were the envy of the rest of the service clubs in town,” she says.

The Mankato experience illustrates the sea change in Rotary’s approach to public relations and a shift from a tradition in which Rotarians tended to avoid the limelight, content to let their humanitarian work speak for itself. But now, Rotary clubs realize that for a volunteer service organization to survive and thrive in the modern era, one marked by ever-increasing demands on free time, they cannot afford the luxury of modesty. “For much of Rotary’s first 100 years, our approach to public relations can be summed up by three words: effective but silent,” says Iowa newspaper publisher William F. Tubbs, North America coordinator for RI’s Public Image Resource Group (PIRG), the international panel charged with helping clubs and districts reach out to the media and the general public. “Our slogan for the next 100 years needs to be ‘Effective as ever, but silent no more.’”

The least expensive route to publicity, of course, is to give the media something they can use: news about humanitarian projects that make a difference, such as when local Rotarians build a playground or travel to a developing country to immunize children against polio. But the reality of the highly competitive news business is that breaking stories – often of the negative or sensational variety – usually trump everything else, including the good news Rotary offers. The key, then, is to be proactive and generate a solid, focused plan for media outreach and public relations, which is exactly what Rotary is doing.

Empowered by the new RI Strategic Plan, which identifies the enhancement of Rotary’s public image as a top priority, Rotary leadership is encouraging clubs and districts to implement public relations efforts more than ever. Just as important, Rotary is providing the tools to do it. Two key resources are Rotary’s Humanity in Motion public image campaign, a series of professionally produced public service announcements (PSAs) suitable for print, broadcast, and outdoor media, and RI Public Relations Grants, an RI Board-approved pilot program that provides funds to help implement grassroots public relations projects, stressing use of the Humanity in Motion materials (see sidebars for more information).

“Considerable planning and resources have been devoted to Humanity in Motion, which provides splendid images and content to promote Rotary,” says PIRG General Coordinator Bob Aitken, managing editor of the regional magazine Rotary Down Under. “But no reasonable public relations campaign is possible without adequate funding,” he adds. “Hence, the RI PR grants, which are intended to encourage clubs and districts to allocate some of their own funds to public relations. Membership will grow if we follow a simple PR formula: budget, plan, and promote.”

Tubbs concurs and poses this challenge to the businessmen and women of Rotary: “Name five successful businesses that don’t advertise.”

Rotary clubs and districts worldwide are embracing this message, combining their own resources with PR grants, while leveraging considerable in-kind donations from vendors and media. After a modest start in 2005-06, when about 300 clubs applied for PR grants, more than 3,200 clubs applied the next year. The total funding reached $2.1 million. These funds, when combined with the required club contributions and in-kind donations, yielded the equivalent of $6 million in PR outreach.

This year, the grants were switched to districts, and half of them – 273 districts spanning 78 countries – applied. The RI Board adopted the change to keep the immensely popular program manageable and to foster more collaboration and coordination between clubs and districts on PR efforts.

Though the data is anecdotal, many local Rotary leaders have reported increases in membership activities, from inquiries to new recruits, coinciding with the outreach. In District 5100, 20 clubs in Oregon and Washington teamed up on a $3,000 grant for a multimedia campaign that saw Humanity in Motion PSAs carried by the regional edition of Ladies Home Journal and local TV stations KPTV and KPDX and their respective Web sites from January to April 2007. The PR grant was matched by $12,000 from the district and participating clubs.

Project coordinator Judy McMorine, also the district membership chair, says free placements and other in-kind donations from the media and the local ad agency that managed the campaign pro bono raised the total value to a whopping $60,500. “The project was a great success,” she says. “While the public image campaign was in full swing, hits to the district Web site tripled. The district reported a membership net gain of about 7 percent, reversing a five-year loss trend. Over and over, we heard positive comments from Rotarians and non-Rotarians alike.”

In New Zealand, six districts received a US$3,000 PR grant for a national billboard campaign using the Humanity in Motion messages on peace, polio eradication, and literacy. The districts sweetened the pot by about $2,500, and in the first half of 2007, six billboards were erected along high-traffic roads in the main cities, including Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. Free placements by the vendor added thousands of dollars to the value of the campaign, says project coordinator Daron Curtiss, PR chair for District 9920.

“The rationale of the billboard program was not only to promote the three themes but to further our drive in New Zealand to raise awareness of the core Rotary International brand,” Curtiss says. “From the feedback we have had from both Rotarians and members of the public, we have certainly achieved that.”

Rob Crabtree, chair of New Zealand’s multidistrict PR task force, adds that calls to a toll-free number “surged dramatically” once billboards including the number went up.

Here’s how other Rotary clubs successfully used PR grants:

• Rotary Club of Libertador Recoleta, Argentina: Billboards at the city’s busiest train and transit stations promoted Rotary’s effort to conserve water, another Humanity in Motion message. The vendor also donated space valued at US$31,000.
• Rotary Club of Mangalore, India: An estimated 20 million people saw a PSA on polio eradication, displayed on billboards at five entry points to the city for six months. The ads were localized with club contact information.
• Rotary Club of Kyoto-Fushimi, Japan: Signs promoting Rotary peace programs were displayed on the lower rear windows of 1,000 taxicabs in Kyoto for two months.
• Rotary Club of Hallstahammar, Sweden: A three-month campaign promoted the club’s 50th anniversary. The project included an exhibit of the club’s history and its humanitarian work, displayed in the local library; Rotary posters placed in banks, tourists bureaus, medical centers, and public office buildings; ads in the local newspaper; and the creation of an anniversary magazine.
• Rotary Club of Kabarole, Uganda: A newspaper and radio campaign about Rotary is credited with increasing membership from 13 to 22 members.

These success stories, says Aitken, underscore a basic truth that all Rotarians must recognize: Public image and membership growth and retention are interconnected. “The prominence of the public relations component in our new strategic plan represents a significant shift in organizational thinking and should send a clear message to Rotary clubs and districts,” he says. “Successful people want to be involved with successful organizations, and a focused public relations campaign will create such an image for Rotary.”