Policy Toward Community Service Activities

1923 Statement on Community Service
The following statement was adopted at the 1923 convention and amended at subsequent conventions :
In Rotary, Community Service is to encourage and foster the application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life.
In carrying out this application of the ideal of service many clubs have developed various community service activities as affording opportunities for service by their members. For the guidance of Rotarians and Rotary clubs and to formulate a policy for Rotary toward community service activities, the following principles are recognized and accepted as sound and controlling:
1) Fundamentally, Rotary is a philosophy of life that undertakes to reconcile the ever present conflict between the desire to profit for one’s self and the duty and consequent impulse to serve others. This philosophy is the philosophy of service―“Service Above Self” and is based on the practical ethical principle that “They Profit Most Who Serve Best.”
2) Primarily, a Rotary club is a group of representative business and professional people who have accepted the Rotary philosophy of service and are seeking:
First, to study collectively the theory of service as the true basis of success and happiness in business and in life; and second, to give, collectively, practical demonstrations of it to themselves and their community; and third, each as an individual, to translate its theory into practice in business and in everyday life; and fourth, individually and collectively, by active precept and example, to stimulate its acceptance both in theory and practice by all non-Rotarians as well as by all Rotarians.
3) RI is an organization that exists
a) for the protection, development, and worldwide propagation of the Rotary ideal of service;
b) for the establishment, encouragement, assistance, and administrative supervision of Rotary clubs;
c) as a clearing house for the study of their problems and, by helpful suggestion but not compulsion, for the standardization of their practices and of such community service activities, and only such community service activities, as have already been widely demonstrated by many clubs as worthwhile and as are within, and will not tend to obscure, the Object of Rotary as set out in the RI constitution.
4) Because they who serve must act, Rotary is not merely a state of mind, nor Rotary philosophy merely subjective, but must translate itself into objective activity; and the individual Rotarian and the Rotary club must put the theory of service into practice.
Accordingly, corporate action by Rotary clubs is recommended under the safeguards provided herein. It is desirable that every Rotary club sponsor a major community service activity each fiscal year, varied from year to year if possible, and to be completed if possible before the end of the fiscal year. This activity is to be based upon a real community need and should require the collective cooperation of all its members. This is to be in addition to the club’s continuing its program for the stimulation of the club members to individual service within the community.
5) Each individual Rotary club has absolute autonomy in the selection of such community service activities as appeal to it and as are suited to its community; but no club should allow any community service activity to obscure the Object of Rotary or jeopardize the primary purpose for which a Rotary club is organized; and RI, although it may study, standardize, and develop such activities as are general and make helpful suggestions regarding them, should never prescribe nor proscribe any community service activity for any club.
6) Although regulations are not prescribed for an individual Rotary club in the selection of community service activities, the following rules are suggested for its guidance:
a) Because of the limited membership of Rotary, only in a community where there is no adequate civic or other organization in a position to speak and act for the whole community should a Rotary club engage in a general community service activity that requires for its success the active support of the entire citizenship of the community, and, where a chamber of commerce exists, a Rotary club should not trespass upon nor assume its functions, but Rotarians, as individuals committed to and trained in the principle of service, should be members of and active in their chambers of commerce and as citizens of their community should, along with all other good citizens, be interested in every general community service activity, and, as far as their abilities permit, do their part in money and service;
b) As a general thing, no Rotary club should endorse any project, no matter how meritorious, unless the club is prepared and willing to assume all or part of the responsibility for the accomplishment of that which it endorses;
c) While publicity should not be the primary goal of a Rotary club in selecting an activity, as a means of extending Rotary’s influence, proper publicity should be given to a worthwhile club project well carried out;
d) A Rotary club should avoid duplication of effort and in general should not engage in an activity that is already being well handled by some other agency;
e) A Rotary club in its activities should preferably cooperate with existing agencies, but where necessary may create new agencies where the facilities of the existing agencies are insufficient to accomplish its purpose. It is better for a Rotary club to improve an existing agency than to create a new and duplicative agency;
f) In all its activities a Rotary club acts best and is most successful as a propagandist. A Rotary club discovers a need but, where the responsibility is that of the entire community, does not seek alone to remedy it but to awaken others to the necessity of the remedy, seeking to arouse the community to its responsibility so that this responsibility may be placed not on Rotary alone but on the entire community where it belongs; and while Rotary may initiate and lead in the work, it should endeavor to secure the cooperation of all other organizations that ought to be interested and should seek to give them full credit, even minimizing the credit to which the Rotary club itself is entitled;
g) Activities which enlist the individual efforts of all Rotarians generally are more in accord with the genius of Rotary than those requiring only the mass action of the club, because the community service activities of the Rotary club should be regarded only as laboratory experiments designed to train members of a Rotary club in service. (23-34, 26-6, 36-15, 51-9, 66-49)