Gov. Jeffrey's Message

by Gov. Jeffrey Wolff

The first word in the Kiwanis slogan "Serving the Children of the World" is the focus of my message this month....service.   In 1915, Kiwanis was founded as an organization dedicated to providing service to communities everywhere and to this day, most of our clubs still honor that commitment.  However, the way in which clubs "serve" varies greatly from club to club.   Service to the community can be defined as raising funds and donating them to a shelter for the homeless or sponsorship of a Builders Club that cleans up a local park.     It can be defined as providing scholarships to help local high school students afford college, having its members serve dinner to residents of a Ronald McDonald House or honoring the town sheriff at a banquet dinner.   These are all things that Kiwanis clubs everywhere do to serve their communities. 

The makeup of the type of projects that a Kiwanis club conducts throughout the year is what I like to refer as the club's "service identity."   This concept of a service identity is very important for clubs to understand about themselves and more importantly for prospective members to understand when considering joining a club.    You might ask why this would matter at all.  Kiwanis clubs, like most entities, need to be well-rounded to attract different types of people.   Younger citizens often want to feel more hands-on with type of community service they perform.   They don't have significant amounts of money to donate to club activities that involve members reaching into their pockets.  Also, they don't typically have a network of financially established friends that can purchase raffle tickets or pay $50 a plate to attend a charity dinner.   As a result, clubs that are heavy in fundraising and light in projects where the members have a chance to roll up their sleeves are not going to attract these individuals.  If younger members do join, its likely that within a year they will move on.   Many clubs utilize their Service Leadership Programs clubs as their hands-on labor for larger projects and there is nothing wrong with that, in fact any opportunity that your Kiwanis club has to jointly plan projects with the Key Club or CKI Club that you sponsor is great.     However, it's important to be sure that you are providing regular opportunities for your members to get their own hands dirty.   Not every member will participate, but it ensures that your clubs keeps its service identify more well-rounded.

I encourage your club leaders to sit down at an upcoming board meeting and look at all of the service projects that you conducted during the 2010-2011 Kiwanis year and put them into categories (Fundraising, Working with SLP, Hands-on Service, etc) and make sure that you are not overloaded in one area or another.   Try to balance what you are planning to do for the remainder of this year so that your club has a good mix of projects.    Your club won't identify every project now, because some opportunities for service arise only shortly before their execution, but you can look at the major projects you know in advance that your club will work on and fill in around them.  

Ideally, you should have a service opportunity available to your members every week and for larger clubs maybe even a couple of times a week.  An active calendar is the sign of an active and healthy Kiwanis clubs and when prospective members see your service calendar, they will be more attracted to the club.   Additionally, the likelihood that a new member can find a project that "speaks" to them is higher and allows that new member to make a real connection with the club.   

Some clubs struggle to identify service projects that they can perform on their own.  Its easy to partner with larger, national organizations and provide volunteers for those events as a stepping stone.   In every community, in every month, I guarantee that there is at least one major event taking place at a local mall, university, or church that is part of a larger organization.   Our District Community Service Committee put together a resource a couple of years ago identifying these organizations and I encourage each of you to visit the Community Service page of the "Member Resources" section on our District Website and download a copy of the Community Service Guidebook.   The direct link is here: http://capital.kiwanisone.org/public_district/pub_Content.aspx?PageID=312  This will be updated this year, but most of the contact information provided in there is still current.

It's also important to encourage different members to chair your service projects as much as possible.  It's fantastic if you have a dedicated team of three Kiwanians who always run the Pancake Breakfast, however, if you are not training new members to take over these positions, it can leave the project vulnerable should something unforseen happen.    The best way to get new members to chair projects is to ask them to bring a service project to the club that interests them directly.   This not only cultivates new leadership, but it also refreshes the project ideas of the club.   Everyone does not want to do the same four service projects every year for ten years.....it's good to make sure that your club is mixing things up a bit and keeping the activities fresh.  

In addition to January being the start of the new year, it is also the start of our Regional Midwinter season here in Capital and I look forward to meeting many of you at the Midwinter Conferences taking place in each of our regions between now and April.  I encourage each of you to make plans to attend these one-day local events.  Many Kiwanians in your area are putting a great deal of time and effort into the planning of these educational opportunities and you can learn quite a bit about resources available to your club and the changes taking place in our organization in 2012.

In Kiwanis service,
Jeffrey M. Wolff