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Understanding the Strategic Plan for our District 7090 involves a couple of basic premises about the role of the district and its relationship with the clubs in the district. Basically, a club is like a “tribal affiliation” in East Africa … a place of belonging where people know each other and relate well to one another.Every club, of course, is a member of Rotary International; individual club members do NOT belong to Rotary International, but each is related to Rotary International by the fact that the CLUB belongs to Rotary International (RI). And, in between these two levels is the district! The district has an administrative function to facilitate the relationship between RI and the club. The district assists clubs in a variety of ways and helps RI to communicate with and motivate clubs in their every-day activities. If we think about the district … the club … and RI … the district is somewhat like the narrow part of an hourglass; some elements come from RI to be funnelled to the clubs … and vice-versa.
Our Strategic Plan reflects this role for District 7090. It is an administrative tool to help us to focus on the needs of the clubs using a framework of “big ideas” from Rotary International. RI’s Action Plan components provide a nice organizer for our needs as clubs. So, the Strategic Plan provides your district committees with areas of focus/priorities based on input from the members with refinement from the chairs of the committees and members of District Council. Action items are generated over a four- or five-month period and provide measurable goals for the committees at the District level. They are reported on five times a year in advance of District Council meetings.
An example. To “Expand our Reach”, the 2022 – 2023 Strategic Plan indicated that one of the Action Items to help expand our reach was to “create an ‘Imagine Rotary’ awareness campaign on social media which can be shared/utilized by all clubs”.
Note the connections here – a reference to this year’s theme and, a tool developed at the District level which can help our clubs. A measurable goal was provided for this action – that 50% of clubs would use infographics and other templates to profile what they are doing using district-generated materials. Again, note the connections here a District Committee will develop the info-graphics and make them available for clubs to use.
The Process: Members of District 7090 are involved in the process in a several ways with the lead taking place at the district level by the appropriate chair for Strategic Planning, the District Governor “chain”, Past District Governors, Committee Chairs and members of committees, Presidents-Elect, Assistant Governors, and District Council. As is always the case in the development plans like these, there are some people who will be more impacted by the plan than others. However, any member who wants to provide input to the product can do so as part of the plan development process. There is a wide-ranging survey of members; results are shared on the District 7090 website.
The draft Strategic Plan is circulated for input to test some of the possible ideas to see if members see benefit and value in them. Time is set aside for any member to provide input. Last year, members could attend a ZOOM meeting organized solely for input from the members to those responsible for the development of the final copy of the Strategic Plan. This will also be a component of the development of the new plan for 2023-2026.
YOUR Strategic Plan, which provides direction for the district and a nice template for clubs, is presented to District Council in June for implementation in the following year. Note that several clubs have asked for a template that they can use to develop their own Strategic Plan. We are looking at this and will follow through. Since this is YOUR Strategic Plan, please feel free to give me a call … or send an email … and we can chat.