By Quentin Wodon, a member of the Rotary Club of Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., USA

Membership growth is an important topic in Rotary. Since my last blog post (6 ingredients for membership growth), my club has continued to focus on how we can follow our strategic plan and continue our initial success at growing our club. We have been fortunate to double our membership in six months, from 18 members in July to 38 in February. We are cautiously not “claiming victory” over our growth goals, since we could still experience a downturn in membership. But we have made progress.

Part of our gains were connected to a new initiative whereby we offer our expertise to local nonprofits. On 24 February, we are hosting two training workshops for local nonprofits on Capitol Hill. We have a wonderful lineup of speakers and 150 people signed up to attend morning sessions on monitoring, evaluating, and conducting cost-benefit analysis; and afternoon sessions on communicating using social media, websites, and powerpoint presentations. The CEO of the Grameen Foundation is our keynote speaker for lunch.

By teaming up with Capitol Hill Community Foundation, which provided funding for our event, we are establishing ourselves as a partner in the community, and also creating an opportunity to recruit new members. Collectively, we can use our professional skills to make a difference in our community and leverage our resources to have an even bigger impact.

To share what our club has learned, I have captured many of our insights into a series of free ebooks, including “Double your Membership in six months; 10 Lessons from a Rotary Club Pilot” on Smashwords. My hope is this series will help clubs put these insights into practice, so we can continue to keep Rotary strong and vibrant.

About the author: Quentin Wodon is a lead economist at the World Bank. He holds PhDs in economics and in theology and religious studies, and has taught at universities in Europe and the U.S. He is currently President of the Rotary Club of Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the Rotarian Economist blog at www.rotarianeconomist.com.