RI Board adopts zone realignment

In June, the RI Board of Directors adopted a realignment of zone boundaries designed to ensure fairness in the selection of RI directors from Rotary's 34 zones.

Because RI directors are nominated from zones, the RI Bylaws require having approximately the same number of Rotarians per zone. Accordingly, the Board must conduct a comprehensive review of zones at least every eight years.

Membership demographics have changed significantly since zone boundaries were last adjusted in 1995.

For example, Rotary club membership in Austria, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia increased 48 percent between 1996 and 2006. At the same time, Japan saw membership decline roughly 25 percent, while most regions of the United States had a slight decline.

In 2002, the Board began discussing the zone structure and appointed committees of current and past RI directors and past RI presidents to study the issue and make recommendations.

The Board presented a proposal to the 2007 Council on Legislation that would have added an additional director and maintained the current zone boundaries. The Council rejected this proposal and instead referred a resolution to the Board requesting it to realign the zones. In June 2008, the Board closed the comment period on proposed changes and voted to adopt the zone realignment

The zone realignment takes effect 1 July 2009 and will be used to select members of director nominating committees in 2008-09.

Governors-elect in 2008-09 will attend governors-elect training seminars (GETS) based on the old zones structure. In 2009-10, governors-elect will attend GETS according to the new structure.