1. ONLINE MEMBERSHIP COURSES
Carrie Goldbeck
Senior Membership Resources Specialist
CARRIE (20 min)
Good afternoon!
How many of you have been on Rotary’s Learning Center?

2. learn.rotary.org Online curriculum
The Learning Center is where all of Rotary’s online courses are housed. All courses are available for free and on demand so you can learn about Rotary whenever you want, and at your own pace.
You can find the Learning Center under Learning and Reference, or by going to learn.rotary.org. [CLICK]
Once you are in the Learning Center, you will see some general topics to the left. The courses are grouped into these topics. As you can see, there are courses about Rotary topics such as the COL and The Rotary Foundation. We also have professional development courses on things like running a webinar and using social media. To find all membership-related courses just go to the membership section.

3. MEMBERSHIP SECTION OF THE LEARNING CENTER
When you get to this page, you can scroll down to see all the membership courses offered. You may notice there are some courses produced by RIBI. They have a number of courses on the Learning Center.

4. New online membership courses
Is Your Club Healthy?
Diversify Your Club
Online Membership Leads
Strategies for Attracting New Members
Best Practices for Engaging Current Members
Kick-start Your New Member Orientation
We’ve recently added 8 new online membership courses on some very important membership topics, including:
Club health [CLICK]
Club diversity [CLICK]
Membership leads [CLICK]
Attracting new members [CLICK]
Engaging current members [CLICK]
New member orientation [CLICK]
Club flexibility [CLICK]
Creating a membership plan for your club [CLICK]
Practicing Flexibility and Innovation
Your Membership Plan

5. QUESTIONS? REGIONAL MEMBERSHIP INITIATIVE
Invest in District Membership Chairs
These were created as part of the regional membership initiative (launched in July 2017), the goal of which is two-part:
A - Invest in DMCs by training them so they are better equipped with strategies and resources to support their clubs. [CLICK]
B - Get these proven membership strategies down to the club level. [CLICK]
Because the district membership committee chairs is now a 3 year term, we want to be sure they are fully equipped with the latest tools, strategies and resources to support their clubs membership. To do this, Rotary Coordinators and their teams are encouraged to hold regional membership seminars to train their DMCs and there is funding available for reimbursement if they follow certain guidelines, including using the curriculum. The curriculum purposefully mirrors the RI curriculum available for the district membership seminar, so that district membership chairs are trained on the same curriculum they are then using to train their club leaders.
The online courses cover the same topics as well, and were developed to supplement the in person curriculum, so that participants can learn more about membership before or after the training event. They they can also be used as an alternative training for those who cannot attend.
While the courses were developed for the purposes of the Regional Membership Initiative, they were designed to work for any club member to take and learn more about things like how to better connect with new members early on, uncover the mystery of membership leads, and attract more members to their club. Whether used as curriculum for learning events or simply for individual exploration, the new online membership courses offer a fun learning experience for anyone. .
Get membership resources to clubs

6. Course materials
When you select one of the courses, you will see the list of course materials. So we are in the Online Membership Leads course, and as you can see, there are videos, PDF’s, how to guides and eLearning modules that learners can click on and learn additional information on the topic. Now a lot of these materials already existed. But for each topic, there is an interactive learning module, and those are the new materials.
The red asterisk indicates that the material is required for course completion. The interactive eLearning modules are always required. These are story-based, and invite the learner to choose different options to learn about what might happen if they make certain decisions as a club leader. To illustrate what I mean, let’s go into this module here.

7. Ok, so we’re going to simulate the learning experience by going into one of these learning modules. This one is my favorite because it really takes the topic of membership leads – something we are really promoting – and it makes it relevant, it personalizes it, and helps the learner understand what it is, why it’s important, and how to use it.

8. A lot of times, we talk about membership leads as a platform or a system, but we forget that the leads are people. Actual people who are waiting to hear from someone.
Here the learner is asked to choose one lead – or one person – and follow their journey.
What we did with these fictitious characters is make one be a prospective member, one a referral, and one a member who is relocating, because many members don’t realize that referrals and relocations can come to us in the form of membership leads too.
So let’s say we choose Daniel first.

9. Daniel introduces himself and he seems like a viable candidate
Daniel introduces himself and he seems like a viable candidate. Again, personalizing the leads, so the learner relates to them. He says he submitted his information and is excited to see what happens next.

10. When we continue, we see the district membership chair, receiving the alert that notifies her of a new membership lead – which is Daniel. We can now help Jamie decide what she should do next. And when we choose different options, we see the impact of those decisions and how that impacts the membership lead, their club, and Rotary.
Let’s say Jamie does nothing.

11. If the learner chooses to do nothing, they see that Daniel is left waiting. His enthusiasm for Rotary turns into frustration, and he now complains about Rotary to people he knows.
The learner then has a chance to go back and try something else. This gives them the opportunity to see how different choices have different outcomes. They are eventually routed to the desired outcome in this way if they don’t initially choose it.

12. This would be the desired outcome
This would be the desired outcome. Jamie contacts Daniel to learn more about him.
And so the journey goes on – and includes real-life examples of things that can happen along the way. In this story, Daniel is eventually assigned to a club, whose leaders contact him and invite him to a club meeting.

13. Online modules
Again, the learner can help Mark who is the club leader decide what to do and see what happens when trying different things. They click on different options and get immediate feedback about their choice, and can go back and make another choice.
We also wanted members to see that they aren’t expected to admit all membership leads to their clubs. If they select “Ask Daniel to Join a Club” they will be warned to make sure they aren’t acting too quickly and that they take the time to make sure it’s a good fit for both of them.
But it also emphasizes following up and refer them back to the district or otherwise indicate why they chose not to invite them.
And that’s just one learning module in one course. 7/8 of the courses have one of these interactive learning modules.

14. Here is a slide from the flexibility course that presents a fictional club and 3 ways they can implement changes to provide more flexible options.
This one is great for members or club leaders who feel that their club is the way it is and they don’t have any ability to change it. It’s also great for those who see the value that comes with making changes to attract new members and re-engage current members, but they may have difficulty implementing the change.
This course will walk you through some examples of how you can be more flexible, but more importantly, how you can manage conflict as you hit some bumps in the road. Each path includes some resistance to overcome, and as the learner, we help Raymond – the fictional club’s president - decide how he can address some issues in his club.

15. Online modules
And here is a slide from the “Is Your Club Healthy?” course – which has 5 of these interactive mini-modules – where the learner is asked to help the club membership chair – Gregory – decide what steps to take to address his club’s declining membership.

16. We tried to show how sometimes an idea doesn’t always work the way we intended, or just didn’t work for the fictional characters in this scenario. We include these examples as well as successful ones because sometimes we also learn from mistakes and it also makes the learning experience more fun.
When you apply the concepts to realistic stories and add human emotion the learning experience becomes more memorable.
In this “choose your own adventure” environment, you can learn more about membership strategies through trial and error, and have fun at the same time.

17. Each learning module ends with a “Next Steps” slide that asks the learner what they will do as a result of this learning, and offers some suggestions and links.
Hopefully members get some ideas that they can try in their clubs, or at the very least have fun going through the eLearning modules.

18. We are really excited about the potential of these online membership courses, and they are currently ones that are getting the most traffic on the learning center. We’ve had over 4,000 unique registrations for these 8 courses.
How many of you have checked these out already?
We hope that you take the courses yourself and find them to be a helpful tool to train members on these topics. Please recommend them to your district membership chairs and club leaders – not just so they take them but get some new ideas to apply to their own clubs.
Thank you so much for allowing me to share these with you.
learn.rotary.org

19. At this time, I can take a few questions.