Full Transcript for Doing Big Things with Lizzy Martin

started meeting every two weeks. Then when it came to building out the committees. So to make sure that we had strong committees that could support this many clubs and this many members, we invited our members to participate, and we created what we called Transition action groups or tags. Well, that makes sense. Okay, yeah. So we brought in all the people who are most knowledgeable and most passionate about membership to bring new ideas to the table. 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:12.539 Define what the membership committee is going to do, how they're going to do it, who needs to be on the committee? 00:09:09.960 --> 00:09:12.539 What are those job descriptions? 00:09:12.539 --> 00:09:16.080 What should their qualifications be? How long is their term? 00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:22.220 What's the succession plan? Kind of, all the details that would go into, you know, setting up a really nice committee. 00:09:23.379 --> 00:09:31.600 The tags were considered a temporary committee, and just being on a tag did not mean you were going to be on the committee. So we were really clear about that. 00:09:32.019 --> 00:09:38.559 People that were sort of had the knowledge for the transitional bit. If I can say it that way, does that make sense? Yeah? 00:09:38.620 --> 00:09:58.585 Because we yeah, we really wanted to tap into the knowledge that existed in our groups, but not sometimes people have all that knowledge, but they've maybe already done the job, and they don't want to take on a role. So by making them, making them know, just doing this for us doesn't mean you have to be on the committee. Meant we got some really great talent at the table. 00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:01.620 Okay, great. Yeah. 00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:11.649 And so What, what were your sort of first either big successes or big stumbling blocks as you were starting to put this together? 00:10:11.649 --> 00:10:14.889 I'm just trying to help people understand this process. 00:10:15.909 --> 00:10:35.394 Well, we spent the two years having the tags, build out the structure of the committees, and then recruiting people to be committee chairs and join the committees, and developing our communication systems. We had to merge three club runner databases into one. 00:10:30.549 --> 00:11:22.225 So there was a lot of that going on. And then on July 1, 2024 we were official,and to me, that was a success, just getting to that point after all the work we had done. The second success was launching our website. That meant our database was in place, and we had a whole new website, CNY rotary.org, Then the next big success was our newest communication tool, and that's the CNY rotary News Network. Okay, tell me about that. I don't know that. Yeah, so in the public image tag, there was talk about, what do we do for a district newsletter with over 100 clubs? I mean, that could be a huge production to do a newsletter. And And is anybody going to read a newsletter if it's like, 30 pages long every month, right? 00:11:22.225 -->

00:12:06.355 So we transitioned, instead of a monthly publication, to basically a live news website, and clubs and committee members can submit their news anytime, and articles are posted almost on a daily basis, and you can go and read it all the time, just like you would any other news website, but it's regularly updated from around from around the region, and people can go there and see what the 100 odd clubs are up to. Yeah, you can scroll through, you know, a river of headlines. And just like you would on a news website, we also cross post everything onto our social channels, so we're on Facebook and Instagram. Okay, okay, yeah, and that sort of, sort of got the word out. 00:12:06.355 --> 00:12:32.799 So here you are, brand brand brand new president, brand new region, and a whole year ahead, what, what was sort of the next, the next pieces were as you were going around and visited clubs and all this, what sort of, I guess, the best phrase that I can think of, what sort of shook out of all this, and what did you learn in those first few months? 00:12:33.940 --> 00:13:46.134 Well, one of the questions I get asked a lot is, How did you visit that many clubs? Right? Because I still have a full time job. I am not independently wealthy and we transitioned our individual club visits to area visits. Okay, so I had 13 area visits where I connected with 96 clubs, wow, and yeah. And the area visits were a little more casual than like a traditional official district governor visit would be. I put my official talk, the one that you probably went around and gave to all of your clubs, right? I put on YouTube, right, so people could just go watch that anytime people use it as a club program. I kept it to 20 minutes, so it'd be perfect for that. And then when we got together in person for the area, visit, we did fun things. We went bowling. We met at a arcade room, we played trivia. We just ate food and had a good time one week stay in karaoke. So we just, you know, had fun with it, right? So just, just a way of opening up the lines of communication and and and figuring out what was going on. 00:13:46.434 --> 00:13:50.394 So as you, as you went around to these, these area visits, 00:13:52.134 --> 00:13:57.294 What things were you discovering that was going to make your your region stronger? 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:37.424 Actually, the area visits themselves, I think, started to contribute to what we are seeing is successful, and that's a lot more communication between our clubs. So each area visit was anywhere from four to 12 clubs all come in together, and they started talking to each other, and now there's just a lot more communication, about collaborating on projects and service, having more social events together. Everyone's kind of expanding their horizons. And I think it's great to see members break out of their little club bubble and start to interact with more rotaryans. 00:14:34.784 --> 00:15:52.440 And I think that's going to that's going to be a big success for us in the long run. I think so. And moving forward, how do you support that so that continues, so people don't sort of slide back into their comfort place? Sure. Well, I mean, we have other events too, so in addition to the area visit,we tested out pretty successfully what I call the Rotary Birthday Extravaganza. And this was, yes, eight simultaneous birthday parties, exact same day, same time, same setup in eight different locations around the region so members could attend whichever one was closest for them, and we provided free cupcakes and at the same time, at 3pmall of the hosts for each of the locations gave the same exact toast to Rotary's 100 and 20th birthday, and so so that was a free event for the members to attend. They got a cupcake out of the deal. And most of the places were held at like a restaurant or somewhere where they could have drinks or stay for dinner if they wanted. And so we're providing additional opportunities beyond the usual area, visit, conference, learning, assembly, type of events to come together, just providing mechanisms for these clubs to gather together again. 00:15:53.679 --> 00:16:18.024 Talking Rotary is a proud supporter of shelter box, which is an international disaster relief charity that hand delivers the emergency shelter and tools families need to self recover after natural disasters and conflicts around the world, shelter box is proud to be rotary International's project partner in disaster relief, further strengthening a global circle of friendship. 00:16:13.899 --> 00:16:25.644 Together, shelter box and rotary are transforming despair into hope for families after disaster, Learn more by visiting shelter box canada.org 00:16:25.644 --> 00:16:36.144 Is there anything else that you want to share that you sort of got part way down the path and said, Maybe we might have done this bit in a different way? 00:16:37.225 --> 00:16:43.090 Oh yeah, we definitely had learning experiences, and we knew that. 00:16:39.085 --> 00:17:44.799 We warned everybody, right, we're going to be trying things for the first time. Some are going to go well, some we're going to need to improve. Some are going to be a total flop. So one of our big flops was our learning assembly. Okay, yeah, the year before, we had Pells learning assembly and conference, they were like, all two weeks apart, and it felt like very demanding on the members, right? So going into this first year CNY, we said, why don't we combine conference and learning assembly so that we're not asking for more than one weekend in April of their time? And we made it on Friday, and then conference kicked off Friday night, and even though it was free and you got a nice, free breakfast and you could just stay and move right into conference, there was opportunities for sightseeing in between. We tried to, you know, hype that up. It just was not appealing to have to take a day off from work to go. So we learned our lesson, take a day off work or made a

longer weekend, I guess, too, right? 00:17:40.839 --> 00:18:29.829 Yeah, yeah, there's, there's, there's all. There's always that balance, I find that at the zone level, but they have events that are that are five and six days long. Yeah, those are too long for most people. Yeah, it's a long those zone institutes can be a long time, especially if you're in the DG track, yeah, yeah. I mean, like six, six days is a long time away to be away from the rest of your life, whether it's work or or home or whatever, yeah. So I think it's finding finding that balance, yep. So we'll do it differently this year. We still haven't decided what, but it won't be part of conference, okay, so find another way to do the learning elements. Yeah, that that that, that certainly makes sense, for sure 00:18:33.174 --> 00:18:51.115 I have in my mind this idea that that, because you have all these clubs working together, and you have such a base, you have, you have a real, a real force to have an impact together already. Where do you see that going? 00:18:53.380 --> 00:19:31.519 Well, the hope, I mean, the whole overarching goal of this is to improve membership, right? Like that's how we got in this position to have to bring three districts together, which thankfully became a great opportunity. And the goal here is that we are strengthening our existing clubs. We're strong enough to start new clubs, and we're doing an amazing job at engaging our members to keep them. And so between those, those three things, we're going to hopefully grow. And we came pretty close this year, even in just the first year, which I didn't anticipate. 00:19:32.799 --> 00:20:14.724 You know, how we get those project? We get those projections about where we're going to end the year? Yeah. So we were projected to be minus 1 We beat the projection. Also, I went back and looked at the three previous districts the year before, they were minus one to 160 so we definitely did better than we were doing before, which is good In. And then I looked into where did these members go? Like, why did they leave Rotary? And of the 124 115 of them either died, moved away or transferred to a different club. 00:20:14.724 --> 00:20:22.644 Yeah, you and you really can't do a whole lot to impact those like, imagine, yeah, people having the nerve of dying and leaving 00:20:24.680 --> 00:20:25.579 so, so 00:20:25.599 --> 00:20:35.859 That left us, really, with nine people that we we couldn't keep in rotary this year. I call that minus nine in my book. Yeah, no, I think that. 00:20:32.559 --> 00:21:16.450 I think that sounds really, really good. Yeah, as you say, it's a positive first step, that that model at least at the end of the first year, looks, looks like it's going in the right direction, if I can say it that way, right? Yeah. I mean, I sees the one minus 124, that's what they count. But it is moving in the right direction. And I just want to make sure that we continue, and I see our teams only getting stronger. You know, in that first year, I would say it's still even with all of the lead up in the planning that we did. It really still took the first six months for everybody to be at full speed. 00:21:16.869 --> 00:21:23.170 Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And where did you sort of feel that you hit your stride? 00:21:26.000 --> 00:22:15.950 Okay, so I gotta tell you, Peter, you probably didn't feel this way and your first days, but the first two weeks of the year, I was just sitting here spinning my wheels like I was we're waiting for the website to get launched. I didn't have area visits scheduled until August. I didn't have, like, any meetings the first couple of weeks, because we have July 4 here, and so I was like, ready to go right away on day one, and I kind of had to wait,hurry up and wait. And then, really, August, once I had that first area visit. The floodgates opened. The events were coming fast and furious. I was away from home a lot, traveling a lot. I put 22,000 miles on my brand new car the first year. So, yeah, lots of driving. 00:22:16.619 --> 00:22:35.460 Yeah, as you as you know, my, my, my district goes across three, three Canadian provinces. So we, we put a lot of miles on our little accessible minivan. Yeah,I don't, I don't know, because I wasn't driving, but there was a lot, there was a lot of time in the van. 00:22:35.460 --> 00:22:50.805 Well, I think of districts like yours when our members are concerned about having to drive two hours to go to an event, right? Like, well, we're still very lucky. We have through ways and highways and everything is very reachable. 00:22:50.805 --> 00:23:23.309 Nobody has to take a boat or a ferry or a plane. We can all just drive there. Yeah, and I mean, some of our other colleagues have even, even bigger districts. I'm thinking of our friends on the East Coast that are like, four provinces and and St Peter makelow all in one district. I mean, that's a big cover, right? Yeah. And we don't even have to deal with different languages, really, either, right? It's English primary language everywhere we're at here. Those are, there's so many other challenges that could have been that we don't have to deal with still, even as a bigger district. 00:23:24.559 --> 00:23:27.680 So where do you see CNY in five years? 00:23:29.835 --> 00:24:15.585 Five years was always what I thought it would take to really, like fully realize everything. There's still so many ideas that were part of our original ideation and the tags and the concepts that we came up with, the committees that we've outlined that need to be completed. So I think that's how many years it will take for us to just be completely fully functioning, at full speed, with teams at full capacity, with excitement about being a leader with clubs that aren't constantly struggling with engagement or finding leaders for themselves, and with new clubs being developed each year like that's where I want us to get to, right? 00:24:15.585 --> 00:24:21.285 And are

you guys doing anything in your region about sort of alternate formats of clubs. 00:24:22.279 --> 00:24:44.559 Yeah, we are already working with the North American club formation Group. We are currently forming a companion club to the Albany rotary club called Albany mosaic. So we're very excited for that. They're recruiting members right now, and we anticipate announcing and chartering that new club by October. 00:24:44.619 --> 00:24:54.640 Nice. That's really Yeah, and is there, is there something unique about that club that makes it mosaic? What are they do? They have a particular goal in mind, yeah, 00:24:54.638 --> 00:24:59.378 like their vibe is very much about diversity. Okay? 00:24:59.720 --> 00:25:32.525 Serving the really diverse communities that are in the city of Albany. Okay, you know a lot the big cities. I don't know if it's like this, where you are in Canada, but the big cities have those legacy clubs. They were the first club in the area, right? And a lot of times they're they have the most long standing traditions. These are 100 plus year old clubs. So this one's looking for just a different vibe from that right, new traditions, new ideas and just a different, different focus on on their service. 00:25:33.305 --> 00:25:56.750 Possibilities are all around us. We see potential in unexpected places and when we share our knowledge, vision and connections, we turn great ideas into action. Together, we can make real change happen. We're Rotary. We are people of action. 00:25:57.410 --> 00:25:59.690 Get involved today at rotary.org/action, 00:26:01.519 --> 00:26:30.845 Nice. I have the, maybe the ultimate version of that in my my district. I have the Winnipeg downtown Club, which was the first club ever outside of the United States, yes, 1912 Wow. Yeah, that's an old club, and it becomes a running joke, because every member of that club will tell you that every time you see them,that they belong to the club that was the first club outside of the United States. So it's kind of become a thing, right? 00:26:31.319 --> 00:26:55.785 So we've got a little tie in to you then Peter, because one of our new initiatives this year was a member orientation that we do at the district level for those clubs that maybe don't have the bandwidth to do their own member onboarding. Okay? So we cover just like all the rotary basics, and we take them on a little history, and we say Winnipeg was the first club that made us an international organization. And we tell all of our members that in our orientation, nice. So yeah, 00:26:55.785 --> 00:27:48.555 So yeah, I understand the idea ofsort of the legacy clubs and doing that, and even, even in my own family, I'm I'm a member of my rotary club that I've been with since 2003 is sort of very traditional. Still meets weekly, has a speaker most weeks, there's dinner, there's all that. My wife is the chair of a satellite club of that same main club, and they meet virtually every couple of weeks. So it's a totally different vibe. Yeah, the projects are different and and all that. So it's kind of neat, even my own, my own household, we sort of yeah, you're living it different ways, and members of my home club listen to this so they'll know my not very well kept secret. 00:27:44.535 --> 00:27:59.295 I'm often more likely to go to the virtual meeting because it's so easy to roll across, across to my office and join Nancy's group than it is to go out and meet at the golf club where my club goes. So you know, 00:28:00.440 --> 00:28:06.859 I feel you. My club meets at a golf course too, and we're hybrid in our meetings, so a lot of times I just log on from home. 00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:43.545 Yeah, it's particularly the wintertime screen. And the other thing that's interesting about my wife, my wife's club, I think, is thatabout a third of the people in the club have some form of disability. But it's not because the club was designed that way. It's because folks with disabilities found a really nice, smooth way to be part of rotary and as I say, not logging out to a club meeting in the middle of winter blogging on virtually. It's it was kind of a happy side effect, if you will. 00:28:38.805 --> 00:29:06.150 Yeah, that's wonderful. I mean, the virtual for a lot of people, is more inclusive as long as you got the technology down. Yeah, and certainly, certainly in this house, there's a lot of technology floating around between, yeah, virtual meetings and podcasts and everything else. It's a lot of what we do, Lizzy, I don't know your rotary background. What brought you to Rotary? 00:29:06.150 --> 00:29:10.589 I'm actually a third generation Rotarian, Oh, really. Okay, cool. 00:29:10.589 --> 00:29:42.180 Yeah, yeah. So my granddad was tRe first in our family. He has since passed, but he was a past district governor as well, okay. And then my dad is also currently a member and a past district governor. So it was my destiny, I guess. So you're just carrying on the family tradition. Yeah, my granddad insisted that I do well, you know, and a good for him for bringing you in, and good for you for coming along, because it 00:29:43.240 --> 00:29:49.059 gives us so many wonderful opportunities to have an impact, right? And you've got the you've got the example to follow, 00:29:49.839 --> 00:29:56.140 yeah, oh my gosh. I don't know what my life would be like without Rotary. I mean, that's all of my friends. 00:29:56.140 --> 00:29:59.920 They're like family, and it's a great outlet. 00:30:00.019 --> 00:30:05.660 For me creatively, and I just, I just love everything about it. 00:30:05.660 --> 00:30:16.759 It's a big part of my life. My husband's a member of the same club as me, and all of our friends are rotaryans that we hang out with. So yeah, Rotary is life. 00:30:17.319 --> 00:30:42.204 Yeah, I understand it's funny, because I was talking to a to a fellow rotary and last night, who actually was the charter member of the original club that I belonged to in a completely

different part of Canada. I was speaking with him last night, and he framed it really well. He said, to have, as he put it, to have a complete life. There are four components. 00:30:42.505 --> 00:31:14.529 There's your family, your friends, your work and community. And he said you have to have all four of those pillars to have sort of the complete life. And he and I are of an age where a lot of folks around us are retiring and deciding what they're going to do next. And he's trying to bring all those folks into the fold and say, now you have some more time, and you want to, you know, and you want to continue to contribute. So this is, this is your way build your community. 00:31:15.200 --> 00:31:22.220 Yeah, yeah. If one of those components is work and you retire, then you better fill the gap Exactly, exactly. 00:31:22.220 --> 00:31:42.305 See, I, you know, I was never any good at that. I retired, and that lasted about three weeks before I started business. So, you know, a retiree, a retirement? Fail, oh, yeah, it was absolutely retirement. Fail, yeah. I'm not sorry that I retired, but I'm so glad that I that I put some of the energy in another direction as well. 00:31:42.305 --> 00:31:43.865 Nice. 00:31:43.984 --> 00:32:08.029 Now they only have sort of one standard question for the podcast, and it's, what was your rotary aha moment? What turned what transformed you through sort of a rotary club member or a rotary newbie into a rotary and what was the thing that sort of solidified you into all of this? 00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:31.759 Well, I actually don't like this question, Peter, because I don't have a good answer. You know, I've never been to like a National Immunization day. Nobody's handed me their baby. Nobody's you know, I've not had any one of those one moments, really, for me, it's like been a culmination of a lot of moments. 00:32:26.420 --> 00:32:45.664 And in my sort of going away speech at our inauguration this year, I thanked my club because I joined Rotary young, and they took me very seriously. They listened to all of my ideas. 00:32:41.525 --> 00:33:43.099 They let me do new things like make us a Facebook page, and, you know, update our website and transform our sponsorships for our events, and just kind of let me test things out and try new things in a really safe space, and every step of the way has been rewarding and resulted in growth. And is why I was able to be able to handle something like being the first ever president of CNY Rotary, right? And when you say results and growth for you, for your region and for your club all at the same time, right? Oh yeah, for Yeah, and always for, just like our vision statement says. And in CNY, we saw, we saw a great movement and in growth, and certainly growth and excitement and our new culture. And in my club, my club was 35 members when I joined at 65 members today, that's good. 00:33:43.099 --> 00:33:57.319 That's real room, yep. So we have a great club, and then certainly in myself,

and all the things that I've, I've learned and adapted to and been able to experience and take with me, that's really neat. 00:33:57.720 --> 00:34:06.240 Lizzie, What haven't we talked about that we should talk about, Oh, I'm so glad you asked me that question, because there's one thing that's been weighing on my mind that I haven't brought up yet? 00:34:06.299 --> 00:35:12.929 I have to tell you guys.So you know, RI challenged all of us as district governors for the 2425 year to raise a million dollars for the endowment fund. Right, right? So I told our foundation chair, you don't really have to worry about that. We've got a lot going on with the CNY business, right? And he said, No, I got ideas, and I think we can do it. Can we try? I said, of course, you can go for it. So the reason I didn't think we could is what I had learned is it takes a year or two. You're campaigning. You're meeting with people talking about their wills and estates and like paperwork stuff, right? In six weeks, our team met the million dollar goal in six weeks. In six weeks. Holy last September, they started, and on November 17, we had a brunch to sell. celebrate raising $1.028million for the Endowment Fund, and since then, we've had more come in. So we ended the year at 1.14 5 million for the endowment fund last year. 00:35:12.960 --> 00:35:33.780 Wow, that was, that was quick, yeah. And, and, I guess my obvious follow up question is, what why you Why do you think that took off? Why do you think that rang true? It obviously rang true with the people in your district. What do you think was about that was about? 00:35:33.780 --> 00:35:37.364 Think it was just timing and a really good team. 00:35:37.664 --> 00:36:20.070 You know, we had this core team of four from our foundation committee that were like dedicated to getting out there and talking to people. And I think our former three districts maybe hadn't talked about it a lot before, right? So it was combination of people who were existing endowment givers who reached the next level, as well as lots of new ones. And so I think there was just some low hanging fruit there that we were able to capitalize on people who'd been thinking about doing it myself, right? Or I challenged us to be part of that movement, right? So my husband and I becoming the quest society members was very humbling and wonderful, right? 00:36:21.079 --> 00:36:29.300 And say that's that's really, really neat that you were able to move it forward so so quickly. 00:36:30.079 --> 00:36:44.164 Our foundation chair said he wanted to show people that as CNY, we can do big things, bigger things than maybe we could have ever done separately as three districts well and and he certainly did. 00:36:40.940 --> 00:36:44.164 He did a great job 00:36:46.264 --> 00:36:57.300 That's certainly proof in it. That's a really good example. Yeah, good example. Okay, is there anything else we should share this afternoon? We're doing pretty we are doing pretty well. 00:36:54.364 --> 00:36:54.905 well, but 00:36:58.440 --> 00:37:08.760 I'm coming right off of inauguration, where I gave a big summary of everyone about the first year, so it's all fresh in my mind for you. So that worked out well with your timing to invite me here today, and I appreciate it. 00:37:08.760 --> 00:37:29.985 That's great. I did. I did see that you had done that little recap, and I wanted to take advantage of that, because I wanted to learn too, right? I mean, creating, creating new structures in any organization is is is a challenge, but in one in Rotary, where, in my opinion, we spend way too much time saying, but we've always done it that way. 00:37:32.960 --> 00:38:05.579 I love it when, when we can look at things in a different in a different manner, yeah, and I mean, we have a pretty strict policy here of if a past district, District Governor, says, Well, when I was district governor, they have to pay a fee to the foundation. I love that. Yeah, so that kept us forward looking. Okay, I think I'm going to carry that one with you. Feel free to steal that one. Yeah, for sure. That's a very good one. That's a very, very good one. Listen. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this. I think you're really going to, 00:38:29.460 --> 00:38:47.639 because when I was doing it before my district governor time, I was really ambitious, and I was doing two episodes a month. I'm not committing the two episodes a month at least, at least right now, I'll be happy to do one a month for the next little while. 00:38:43.199 --> 00:39:19.050 And I really, really appreciate you contributing and agreeing to be a guest. Well, thank you so much for having me. It's fun. 00:38:52.065 --> 00:39:19.050 It's always great to see you. 00:39:19.050 --> 00:39:28.769 Take care, Lizzie. Let's talk again soon. 00:39:28.769 --> 00:39:30.989 Okay, sounds Great. Take care. Bye. Bye. You you 00:39:30.989 --> 00:39:36.389 thank you so much for joining us on another great episode of talking Rotary. 00:39:33.030 --> 00:39:36.389 We would love to hear from you. 00:39:36.570 --> 00:39:44.775 Please send us your comments and story ideas and you can share with us easily by sending us an email at feedback at talkingrotary.org 00:39:45.400 --> 00:40:00.119 Let's keep talking Rotary. You. You.