How To Be Innovative With People of Action Campaign

 

Rotary's People of Action campaign tells the world Rotarians are people of action. But are we as Rotarians being people of action when it comes to that very campaign? Faced with a tight budget, many rotary leaders think there is little room in their spending plan for discretionary items like People of Action ads. The campaign is designed to increase awareness in Rotary and our humanitarian efforts. The desired result is membership growth, which ultimately grows dues and our budget. So isn’t it ironic that it is among the last things we tend to fund?

 

Confronting the same dilemma, rotarians have searched and found an alternative that not only funded a public image campaign, but made a profit that could be used elsewhere. District 6980 produced a Rotary supplement which was inserted into the Sunday Orlando Sentinel reaching 114,000 homes. And they paid for it by selling advertising.

An eight-page supplement with a social media component costed US $6,500. Advertising was priced to support that with rates that were still half of the newspaper’s published rates. They however quickly realized that eight pages was not enough and an additional four pages only costed US $500 more...less than what was being charged for a quarter-page ad.

Ultimately District 6980 ended up with 16 pages at a cost of $7,500. They included stories about Rotary, including efforts to eradicate polio. They included stories about Rotary Youth Exchange and Rotary Youth Leadership Awards written by students...and much more. They encouraged clubs to give them stories by giving them a half page of copy with each half-page ad purchased to give readers a flavor for what was being done locally.

The advertising sold generated US $12,000, resulting in a US $4,500 profit! District 6980 then used that in part to fund a People of Action series of four ads in a local magazine in conjunction with a story the magazine ran about a very successful anti-bullying program we had developed.

By being innovative and thinking outside the box, District 6980 became the people of action the campaign promotes.