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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
An Update from the CEO of Rotary
00:34:52
In this episode, Rob is joined by John Hewko, General Secretary and CEO of Rotary International. John shares an update on Rotary’s global initiatives, ...
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- [00:02]
Dr. Rob Harder
This is Dr. Rob Harder with the nonprofit leadership podcast, Making youg World Better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All of these reasons combined led me to start this show. And it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who are successful successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy the show as together we hear how they are making their world better. Welcome to the nonprofit leadership podcast Making your World Better. Thanks so much for joining us. Always good to have you with us. Well, today John Huko is the general secretary and CEO of Rotary International, and we're going to talk all about Rotary. My guess is you've heard about Rotary. Nearly every town and community in America has a Rotary, and now internationally it's spread quite a bit and there's lots of Rotary groups all across the world. He's going to talk a bit about the leadership challenge with that, but also the incredible opportunity. Now, before we go into the show, let me just share a few more things to open up with. First of all is this. Many of you know that I provide leadership and life coaching. With my 30 years of nonprofit experience, I know firsthand how hard leaders like you work. And so I love providing this coaching opportunity. Now, what you may not know is that I also provide consulting services. In fact, currently I'm working for an organization to help them create a clear strategy and plan to raise $3.5 million to expand their organization. So if your nonprofit needs help with fundraising strategy or operational effectiveness, reach out today. You can email me at robharter.com or go to my website, robhardo.com or you can call me 435-776-5173. I would be happy to provide a free sample coaching session or a consult to see how best I could help you and your organization. All right. Now onto today's show. Well, as I mentioned, John Huco is our guest today and he's going to talk a lot about leadership and specifically the leadership he's providing at Rotary and a bit about, you know, how they're providing not just kind of mission and purpose to not just the organization, but to people who are looking to give back to their community and to give back internationally. Well, another thing that we talk about in this conversation is in May 2023, the US Surgeon General issued a report that drew attention to the loneliness epidemic that is affecting now one in two American adults. So one of the things we're going to talk about is how can volunteerism and community involvement really help address this societal issue? And so he's going to talk a bit about that and how Rotary is really trying to provide that opportunity for both meaning and connection and community. Well, as always, love having you tuning in. Thanks for joining us again today. Now onto the show. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox, DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, again, welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. We have a great guest today. John Huko from Rotary International is here today. So, John, first of all, thanks for taking time out of your very busy schedule to join me on the show.
- [03:16]
John Huko
Rob, great to be with you and thanks for having me.
- [03:19]
Dr. Rob Harder
Absolutely. Well, I always like to start out my guests sharing a bit about themselves, how they got to where they are. So tell us about your journey of becoming the general secretary and CEO of the Rotary and International. And as you do, give us just a sense of all that Rotary does. I think Rotary has a very good name brand, you know, identification, but I have a feeling a lot of people don't know all that you do, so maybe you can start there.
- [03:42]
John Huko
All right. Well, it's a, you know, we're obviously a large global organization. I think almost every town and certainly the United States, you drive in, you'll see the Rotary wheel as you, as you drive into town. We really go back to 1905. We were founded here in Chicago, which is where our world headquarters are. And we were the first Rotary club was really the LinkedIn before anybody had heard of LinkedIn. The idea of those original Rotary clubs was to bring business leaders in the community together to help each other with their business and also to have a good time and experience the fellowship, et cetera. And about 15, 20 years later, the kind of the concept of community service was added to the Rotary DNA into the ethos. So Rotary really is an organization where you sort of, I like to say the intersection between commerce and cause. So you join a Rotary club to really network professionally, sort of have a good time with really nice and interesting people, and at the same time to really do good in your, in your community. So today from those sort of humblebee, back in 1905, we have about 45,000 clubs around the world, 1.2 million Rotary members, and 75% of our membership is outside the United States. And we're seeing our largest growth areas in Africa, parts of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, for Example, We've had a 45% membership increase since the start of the war, which is sort of an interesting statistic. And in Asia, India, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, we're seeing really significant membership growth. So it's really an organization that we run one of the largest youth exchange programs in the world. Polio eradication is our principal corporate initiative. It's something that we, as a nonprofit began back in 1985. And of course, our clubs do a myriad of projects. Health, literacy, disease prevention, treatment, education. We have a huge scholarship program. So we've calculated, and we hired Johns Hopkins and Harvard to help us sort of calculate the worldwide value of all the good works that our Rotary clubs do as a whole. And it's about a $2.4 billion a year operation Rotary. So we're, you know, we're not the Gates foundation, we're not Rockefeller, we're not the Ford foundation, but we, we make a tremendous impact on the world now.
- [05:44]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's massive, actually. Yeah, the impact you have is very large. And so again, thanks for all you do. And you're right, it's almost every community has Rotary. I know we have three rotaries here in where I live. So. Okay, so as you came into this role, what became your key, key priorities for the organization and how have they changed, perhaps say, over the years that you've been leading the organization? So tell us a bit about that leadership journey.
- [06:06]
John Huko
Well, I've been at Rotary for 14 years now and we've seen really an evolution. You know, people still want to serve, they want to give back. But certainly in places like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, uk The dynamic is shifting in that people want to serve, they want to give back, but they don't want to be wedded to a sort of traditional club model where you go to a weekly or bi weekly meeting. That tradition model is still very popular in the sort of the emerging markets, for lack of a better word, Africa, Asia, there. That traditional model is working quite well. And as I mentioned earlier, we're having significant membership growth in those areas. So I think one of the challenges we're dealing with is that as the marketplace has changed in places like the United States, we need to modify our product. People want to give back. They want to take advantage of what Rotary has to offer in terms of our global membership. The say that I'm interested in that sort of stuff, but I'm not interested in all the kind of fixed weekly meetings and kind of getting tied down. And so we've now moved to really, we've pivoted and adapted. And I think Covid really helped us because we had tried for a long time to sort of get Rotarians to embrace technology. And it was, you know, it's an organization has deep, profound, important traditions. And then Covid comes along and we had no choice but to. The entire Rotary world went virtual for a pretty extended period of time. And we saw that it is possible to use technology very, very successfully and effectively. So a lot of what sort of the innovations that we're trying to come up with is how do we get away from our traditional club model and offer to our Rotarians or new potential Rotarians an experience that is different from, let's say, our traditional club model where they can come and do service, where they can network professionally, where they can take advantage of this extraordinary global platform that we have. I mean, there's no better organization in the world if you're living in a small town, let's say in Utah, and you want to do international service. There's no better organization than Rotary because anywhere you are, you can link up with Rotary clubs anywhere in the world and really do significant, important projects, either by the funding that the club raises or through the significant grants we give from the Rotary Foundation. So I think adaptability, flexibility, modifying our product to be more in tune with the marketplace is probably the, the largest challenge we're facing now in terms of, on the, on the flip side, in terms of our programmatic stuff, it's really eradicating polio. That's a, it's a fascinating story and maybe I could just take a minute and share that with your, with your, with your listeners. Because, you know, it does demonstrate the power of the nonprofit sector and it does demonstrate the power of audacity, if you have the audacity. And it demonstrates the power of partnership. So back in 1979, Rotary was celebrating 75th anniversary and saying, okay, how do we commemorate that? And smallpox had just been eradicated. So he said, all right, let's start vaccinating children against polio in the Philippines. Then in 85, we took the audacious step and said, let's eradicate polio. Let's see if we can eradicate a disease for the second time in human history. And three years later, we were joined by unicef, CDC in Atlanta, and the World Health Organization and we created the Global Polio Eradication initiative. We had 350,000 cases of polio at the time in 125 countries. And through our efforts and more recently the Gates foundation and gavi, the Global Vaccine alliance have joined our consortium. And in partnership with these organizations, we've now gotten to where there are just two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the wild polio virus is still circulating. And so we are really on the verge of eradicating a disease for the second time in human history. And so I think. And so what, As I mentioned. And Rotarians have contributed about $2.7 billion to that effort. You know, Rob, that's a lot of pancake days and walkathons, haunted houses on Halloween. And we're really on the brink of eradicating this disease. And the lesson learned there is, if I were, you know, if you want to make a difference, be audacious. I mean. I mean, here's. We're a nonprofit. We're not a ministry of health. We're not a multilateral institution. We're not a you. And we had the audacity to say and to do it. And so if you have the audacity and the vision and the stick to itness, you can do great things. But we needed to partner. And that's the other lesson learned here. It's about one plus one is three. And by partnering with our various partners, each of us brought a distinct, unique skill set to the table. Everybody stayed in their lanes. We operate in a coordinated fashion. And through that partnership and audacity and perseverance, we're really on the verge of leaving a legacy for as long as mankind inhabits the Earth, which is a very powerful thought for me.
- [10:47]
Dr. Rob Harder
No, thanks for sharing that. Well. And one of the things I want to lean into was the volunteerism and the community involvement that Rotary really has championed for so many years. It's interesting. In May 2023, the US Surgeon General issued a report that drew attention to the loneliness epidemic that is affecting one in two American adults. So in your opinion, with your position there at Rotary and all that you do, what role can volunteerism and community involvement help to address the societal issue that's really obviously impacting us pretty severely, with the US Surgeon General issuing this warning, and then what role does nonprofits have to address this issue as well?
- [11:23]
John Huko
I think we have a massive role because, you know, loneliness is an epidemic. There's really no question about it. And as family structures change and become much more dispersed and diffused, it sort of. It adds to that. And how many people are senior citizens, retirees are living alone, far from family, far from friends, perhaps. And so I think voluntarism is. I mean, there's no question that people live longer and live happier if they're active, engaged. And if they give back, I mean, that is, as far as I can tell, scientifically now, been demonstrated and proven. That's where organizations such as Rotary or really any serious good volunteer organization can really make a difference because you give people a purpose, you give people a goal that they can shoot for, and then you have that social interaction aspect of it. And I think that's kind of one of the huge value propositions of our, of our Rotary clubs is that it does provide you a venue to meet with interesting people, have that social connection, but also use that social connection, not just have a good time, but to truly make a difference, whether it's in your community, whether it's regionally or whether it's internationally. And so an organization like Rotary does give you the opportunity to do, to do all of that. And that's just Rotary. All the service organizations, nonprofit organizations in general, I think, are going to play a huge role in helping to address this loneliness, this loneliness issue. And, you know, you really think about it, people are living longer, you know, 60s, the new 50 or 70 is the new 60. And so we have a generation, my generation and older, who are, you know, have money, desire, energy, experience, want to give back. And so I think in some ways this is a really a golden age for voluntarism because we have a demographic that's coming down the pike that has all the required elements to really be able to make a difference. And if you look at the younger side of the spectrum, there's no question people, like younger people want to give back. They want to make a difference. If they don't want to do it, we're finding in a structured kind of, they want to, on their time when they can jump in, do something, make a difference, pop back out. And that's why, as an organization in those societies where that is now becoming the norm, working very hard to adapt, adapt our product, adapt what we're offering to the marketplace to make it more, to make it more attractive to the more, to the younger demographic that we want to attract to, To Rotary.
- [13:46]
Dr. Rob Harder
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that because, yes, I think about my, my listeners, I know quite a few of them, or this next generation coming up. How have you started to adapt your product, so to speak, to really attract them more? Is it the structure of the meetings each week? Is it the involvement of membership? Like maybe talk a little bit more specifics about how you are really reaching out to this next generation to get them plugged in and have them have a part of this community opportunity to give back and volunteer.
- [14:12]
John Huko
Well, what we offer again is this opportunity to volunteer, opportunity to volunteer on a global scale, opportunity to make impact and sustainable impact at scale. And finally there's the kind of the mentoring. One of the big value propositions is, you know, you have a lot depending on the club. And each of our clubs has its distinct personality and focus and interest. And so you really got to find the club that kind of meets your needs. But there's, you know, in many, many of our clubs we have people who are, you know, highly successful in a whole array of professions and mentoring and helping is a huge part of the DNA of the ethos and DNA of Rotary, of Rotary as well. And so what we're doing again is providing much more flexibility for club meetings. We're now providing club models where you join a club just to do service, organizing clubs around causes. So if you're into the environment, you join that club. Because I'm really into the environment. And that's what the club focuses on, environmental product projects, whether it's water and sanitation or advocacy or whatever. So we're trying to offer more variety of options in our product line to make it more attractive. But then you've got certain demographics that really enjoy the weekly meeting, coming to the meeting, catching up with folks, doing the projects, making a difference. So really that's been the lesson that we've learned over the last decades that we have to, you know, significantly in many of our markets, differentiate the product line to make it more attractive to different, to different interests as society is changing. But what is not changing is that there is a deep, profound desire on the part of people to give back. And that's what we're able to tap at Rotary is people who want to make a difference. And you see what, you know, see what's happening with the extraordinary projects and impact that our Rotary clubs are having around the world.
- [15:59]
Dr. Rob Harder
We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofits donations? Look no further than DonorVox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations and simplifies giving for your supporters. With DonorBox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is donorbox.org hey friends, thanks so much for listening to the nonprofit Leadership podcast. Many of you know that I provide leadership and life coaching. With my 30 years of nonprofit experience, I know firsthand how hard leaders like you work. I also know how important it is to have someone you can call on and to get help with the barriers and leadership challenges you will face both professionally and personally. I really want to help people thrive and become all they were meant to become by providing coaching and consulting services. And it's been so much fun working as a coach, working with clients who are leaders just like you, looking to grow personally and professionally. What you may not know is that I also provide consulting services currently. In fact, I'm working with an organization to help them create a clear strategy and plan to raise $3.5 million to expand their organization. So perhaps you're an executive director and you sense your organization has hit a lid on growth and you need a strategy as to how you can scale your nonprofit. Or perhaps the culture you set out to create is not the culture you have currently and it's impacting your staff retention. Or maybe you're facing a major resource challenge and you don't know what to do. That's where I can help. I come alongside leaders and organizations to create strategies to grow their organizations and maximize their impact. If your nonprofit needs help with fundraising strategy or operational effectiveness, reach out today. You can simply email me@robparter.com you can go to my website, robharder.com, or you can call me 435-776-5173. I would be happy to provide a free sample coaching session or a consult to see how I can best be of help to you and your organization. Well, thanks again for listening. Now back to the show. Well, thanks for sharing that. And you'd already mentioned this about the, the huge impact you're making with polio specifically and eradicating polio, maybe as you, you've talked about, you know, you're down to two countries now. What has been the secret of your success? This would be the second time, as you mentioned, to eradicate a disease. You obviously collaborate with a lot of other organizations, foundations. Talk more about why Rotary has been so successful at this.
- [18:49]
John Huko
Well, you know, Harvard, Harvard Business Review asked me to write a piece a couple years ago, well, five, six years ago, about, you know, here you have Rotary, 1.2 million members spread out all over the globe. You know, obviously you have people to come and go and retire and leave. And you have, you know, over the course of 30 years, you've had a significant, you know, turnover in your membership. What has Been, as you asked, a secret sauce to keep this extraordinary but very decentralized and diffuse, because each club, you know, kind of does what they want. We can't sort of tell them what to do. And they have been able to stay the course, raise 2.7 billion and bring the world to the verge of eradicating polio. And I said there were really three characteristics in polio that were critical and would need to be in place were we to do another similar type of global initiative at the end of polio. First is that when we started back in 85, it was a disease that was pretty much everywhere in the world. And it was a real thing for most Rotarians. It wasn't some exotic disease off in some faraway land. It was, you know, just about everybody, every Rotarian in the world knew somebody who had polio, had seen polio. Polio was obviously in 125 countries. So it was a very real, tangible thing that every Rotarian could kind of rally around and say, wow, okay, I know what this is all about, and it actually affects me and my community. Second, the way we. There's two types of polio vaccine. There's the injectable and then there's the oral, two drops. The injectable is more expensive, but you can't get polio from the injectable vaccine. But it's expensive and you have to be a health worker. The drops, the oral vaccine is what's really allowed us to do this vaccination campaign. It's very cheap. Anybody can be a vaccinator. You could be, Rob. I could be. I know. My first vaccination campaign was in a slum in India. I was in a. In a small hut in a slum outside of Mumbai, and mothers were bringing the kids in to be vaccinated. I'm putting two drops in every child's mouth. And then I look out the window and I see four kids crawling across the street with polio. And at that moment, it became not just something I was kind of doing or contributing to or at academic exercise. It became deeply emotional and profound because I saw that with those two drops that I was putting in each one of these children's mouths, they'd never have to suffer with. Those kids were suffering. And at that point, it became deeply emotional. And that experience, hundreds of thousands of Rotarians experience the same thing. And so you have to. The fact that polio eradication allowed every Rotarian to be hands on, not just contributing or cutting a check or writing a letter to some politician or something, you could hands on, go to whatever country or your own country and sit there and vaccinate children and know that you are personally physically making a difference. And so that's the second characteristics. You have to be able to participate beyond check writing. And the third, that it was easy to measure success. Polio. You either have polio in the world or we don't. You know when to declare victory. So if, let's say our goal were to be world peace, you know, it's. It's infinite and it's timeless in a way. Right. At least if human history continues to repeat itself. So we needed to have something that was unique and, or common to almost every Rotarian, that you can participate beyond check writing. And third, that you had a clear defined end game. And I think that was. And then partnering, partnering with people who could. It's all about one plus one is three. So I'd say that was really the secret sauce that allowed us to over 30 some years, stay the course on this incredible journey.
- [22:19]
Dr. Rob Harder
Well, I love you sharing those principles because I think no matter what nonprofit you lead, those are great principles for their nonprofit. You know, I think it obviously has worked for Rotary, but I think that the principles there we can all apply and we can really learn from. Okay, when it comes to Rotary leveraging the lessons learned from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, how are you then taking that and really tackling new challenges? Because obviously you do more than just the focus on polio. Tell us how you're translating that into other challenges.
- [22:48]
John Huko
Well, one of the biggest challenges, we have 1.2 million members. And if we were to ask them, gee, guys, after we've eradicated polio, what do we do next? You're going to get 1.3 million points of view, right? Because we do so much. We have, you know, we do great work in water and sanitation, environment, disease prevention, treatment, literacy, you know, water and san, you know, it, you know, spans the gamut and a lot of passionate Rotarians are really into this. So I think our biggest challenge is going to be how do we, in this now new normal that we're in with our organization doing so much, come to a consensus on what the next global project should be. And I personally think we should have one. Being in the polio effort put us at the table with some incredibly serious players and made us a player which may not have, would not have been perhaps at that same level had we, had we not done polio. So I think we need to have it. And the challenge is going to be trying to rally this disparate membership around something. But what we're doing in the meantime, it's not like you know, you eradicate polio on January 1, 2027 and on January 2 you say okay, now we're going to do X. It doesn't, you have to have a ramp up period. So what we're doing now is we've funded over the last four years annually one large regional project somewhere in the world to try to build up a bench of potential, potential global initiatives or big regional initiatives if we were to decide to go in that direction after eradicating polio. So we've got a significant project where we partnered with Gates, Gates Foundation, World Vision, Zambian government and Rotary to eliminate malaria in two provinces. In, in Zambia we have a, a huge cervical cancer project in an African country. In Egypt we, so we have, we're developing these significant water project in India. Every year we give significant money to a large project. It's a competition. Rotarians put in proposals and, and a winner is chosen to develop a bench so that when we eradicate polio we have some potential, potential alternatives to move this forward.
- [24:57]
Dr. Rob Harder
Oh that's really, that sounds very exciting. And like I said, there's so many options out there, so many things you can do with leveraging the people you have, the resources you have. Well, you've had a lot of experience and specifically leadership experience. What has been your greatest leadership lesson learned since becoming the general secretary and CEO of Rotary?
- [25:15]
John Huko
Well, you know, I lead a global organization and our governance structure reflects that international composition. So our Rotary International Board is 75% of our members are non, non Americans. That's where you know, our membership comes. Our board members are elected from, you know, we have our, our board, half the board members change every year. Because part of the value proposition of Rotary is leadership growth. So at our club level we have these, you know, 45000 clubs. The presidents change every year. And then we have a regional structure that where the regional leaders change every year. And then every, you know, you members of the board have a two year terms and they staggered. So every year half the board changes. The idea being that you know, you know, you learn how to be a leader when you run a Rotary club or when you're running Rotary regionally as a Rotary volunteer and these are all volunteer positions. And so as the professional staff we're sort of the continuity in the face of this ever changing volunteer leadership structure. So I've learned to, you need to be very nimble. You need to really be able to Adapt. You need to understand the world and the cultural differences in an organization that truly is like the United Nations. It's cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, learning to listen and to try to build coalitions. In terms of the staff that I oversee, we have 800 staff, both at our world headquarters here in Evanston and our seven offices outside the United States. And that's a function of, you know, lead by example, listen, be open to suggestions, assume you don't have all the right answers. You know, I, I think the most important thing for me has been, and I've had several leadership positions in my career in varied contexts. I always like to surround myself with people who are better and smarter than I am. You know, I am relatively clever. I, you know, I don't make all that many mistakes. I do occasionally, as all of us do. But if I surround myself with people who are even better than I am, I think your probability of making mistakes and not doing the right thing diminish significantly. And that's sometimes hard for leaders to do right. And at the end of the day, I think what you have to realize is if something good happens and it's a function of who you've hired and who you've surrounded yourself with, at the end of the day, if you're the CEO, you're going to get the credit. And same if things don't go well, you're going to take the hit. That's the way it is. And so you just sort of checking your ego and realizing that surrounding yourself by really good people or even better than you is really is to everyone's benefit, including your own.
- [27:48]
Dr. Rob Harder
Couldn't agree with you more. And one other question I was going to ask you about leadership and particularly with this next generation coming through and kind of the state of nonprofits right now. Had several guests on the show talk about the retention issues that we're facing as a nonprofit sector, that we are just not keeping people as long as we'd hoped. So a development director, you know, maybe at most is 18 months in a position in a nonprofit. And executive directors, I think it's no more than three years typically is the average stint. And so you've got all these rotating doors, so to speak, of leadership. What has Rotary learned with this? I mean, you've got a force kind of rotating leadership in your model. I know, but for a lot of nonprofit organizations, you want some stability to make sure the foundation of the organization is strong and solid and it's growing and donors can have trust in the leadership of the local nonprofit organization. Anything on the leadership side of what nonprofits can learn from both roadie and your experience leading Rotary, what are some things that the nonprofit sector can just get better at when it comes to leadership development?
- [28:45]
John Huko
Well, I mean, we have sort of a unique organization that we have a lot of volunteer leaders, Rotarians that rotate in and out. That's part of our kind of the value proposition in Rotary. And then we have the professional staff that I oversee. We're sort of the continuity or the continuity. And so if I'm looking at the volunteer side, by design, it's meant to be discontinuous, right. With annual changes of leadership at our club level and at a regional level and then every other year, you know, at, at the board level. But on the professional staff side of things, we've been very fortunate. We have about a 6% turnover rate at Rotary, which is really low when you look at most nonprofits. So we've tried very hard to, to keep our salaries as high as we can afford to keep them. You know, we are still a nonprofit, you know, make our right as good of benefits as we can. And obviously it's, it's all about providing a great work environment that people want to, people want to stay. I like to manage personally by, by data rather than by anecdote. And so we have over the years done really sophisticated employee engagement surveys, Anonymous, with all of our employees. And we use those results not to penalize or to, you know, your performance isn't based on the results of that survey, but to provide each manager with their respective results from the survey. And each manager has to put together an action plan that addresses the areas of opportunities that that survey highlights. And again, it's not meant to be punitive. It's not meant to be to give you a prize. It's really meant to say, okay, here's the areas where we're doing fine, here's where you need to improve. And each manager has five or more direct reports, gets a roll up of his or her results from his or her direct reports. And everyone has to put together an action plan. And we've seen dramatic improvements in these cores over the years because we take it seriously. And there are a lot of great third party outfits that you can sort of retain to do these things are anonymous, etc. So we just launched our latest one today. So we try to do, we try to do it every two years. But, but Covid, you know, we didn't do it over Covid. It would have been a little bit of a skewed result because of, you know, everybody living, working at home and stuff. But now we're back into the new normal, the hybrid model. And that's the other thing I'm, we're seeing, we're seeing at least that it's, it's very difficult to retain and it's difficult to attract good talent if you don't offer a hybrid, a hybrid option. And, and I know there's a lot of, you know, Amazon and others have sort of made this splash about bringing everybody back to the office. I didn't go that route. We're operating effectively, efficiently. We're fortunate that our business is the kind that we can operate remotely effectively. So we have a hybrid model. Most people are in two to three days a week and out two to three days a week and depends on the position. Some are fully remote, some are mostly in the office. But it's, it's, it's. And we found it to be very, to be very effective, a very effective way to go forward.
- [31:39]
Dr. Rob Harder
Well, studies have shown that people who are thinking about leaving the nonprofit sector or leaving their job in the nonprofit sector, if the organization provided a hybrid or a flexible work environment, that they would stay. That's one of the reasons why people actually leaving. So it's interesting, you're right in line with what studies are showing what would keep people, and particularly this next generation. I think they've come to their work age, you know, kind of post college days in this world where remote work is pretty normal. So I think that's smart of what you've done. And I think that this is, I think, still a trend line, certainly the nonprofit sector, but I see this across the board overall, so this has been very fascinating. Well, John, again, for those who are listening, want to find out maybe a little bit more about you as well as Rotary. Where would you send them online?
- [32:22]
John Huko
Well, there, Our website is rotary.org There's a club finder section or you can type in the city and it'll highlight all the clubs within, within that area. We also have something called membership leads where you can go online and just click on and say, I'm interested in. I live in, I don't know, North Carolina, and I'm interested in finding out more about Rotary. And then we'll have somebody reach out to you and try to put you in touch with a Rotary club in your area. And again, every club has its own personality, its own interests, its focus. But given that we have so much variety and most towns have more than one Rotary club, I suspect if one is interested in that sort of intersection between commerce and cause. Giving back locally, regionally, globally. Having access to be able to do great humanitarian work on a global scale, certainly. And beyond just that, we have what we call our Rotary Fellowships, a hundred of them. There's a fellowship of, you know, people are into tennis, and they organize these tennis tournaments all around the world for members. There's a sailing fellowship, there's a beer aficionados. You know, there's. You name the interest. There's a Rotary group, there's a golf fellowship, and there's a cycling fellowship, and they organize events all around the world. Caravanning, I guess they call it in the UK, RVing Fellowship. And so they get together in some town in Europe and then they'll caravan around Europe for. For whatever. So there's a lot more than just sort of community service. There's a kind of global fellowship aspect to Rotary that you can avail yourself of as a member.
- [33:47]
Dr. Rob Harder
No, that's great to know. Well, encourage my listeners to check out the links that I'll send in the show notes. But again, John, thanks for taking time to be on the show, and thanks for the leadership you provide this sector.
- [33:56]
John Huko
Great. Well, thanks, Rob. Thanks for having me.
- [34:00]
Dr. Rob Harder
Hey, friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google podcasts, and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to, like, subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit Leadership Podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website. Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Well, thanks again for listening. And until next time, keep making your world better. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Go to YouTube and look up Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. We'll see you there. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.