What is Rotary?
Rotary begins with a simple idea: people working together can make their communities better.
We believe Rotarians are defined by their actions, not by whether their name appears on a membership roster. If you volunteer your time, advocate for positive change, help your neighbors, bring people together, or use your skills to make your community stronger, you are already doing the work of a Rotarian. You may simply not have called it that yet.
Joining Rotary gives that work a community.
Service is at the heart of Rotary
Rotary exists to serve. Over the more than one hundred years that have passed since Rotary was founded, service has meant many different things. It has meant helping a student succeed, supporting a family in need, improving access to health and education, strengthening local organizations, eradicating polio, and responding when a community faces a challenge.No one person or organization can address every need. Rotary brings together people with different backgrounds, professions, experiences, and abilities and gives them a way to turn goodwill into action.
We do not all have to care about exactly the same issue. What connects us is the belief that we have a responsibility to contribute to the place we call home.
Relationships before they are needed
Community work depends on relationships. The worst day to meet another community leader for the first time is the day you need to ask them for help. Strong communities are built when relationships are strong.
Rotary creates a place for relationships to grow, before you need them.
When an opportunity arises or a problem needs to be solved, the first question you ask won't be: “Who can I call?” You will already know the answer. Because the person you need to call is in Rotary.
SeaTac and Tukwila need people working together
SeaTac and Tukwila are remarkable communities, but they also face significant challenges. Too many of our neighbors experience poverty, barriers to opportunity, health disparities, housing insecurity, and other circumstances that make it harder for individuals and families to thrive.
These are not problems that government, schools, nonprofits, businesses, or volunteers can solve alone. If those problems are to be solved, it will require all of us.
Rotary provides a place where people who care about this community can find one another, learn from one another, and work together. Sometimes that means organizing a service project. Sometimes it means supporting another organization's work. Sometimes the most important thing Rotary can do is connect the right people so that a good idea becomes possible.
You might already be a Rotarian
You do not need to be a certain age, have a particular profession, or hold a leadership title to care about your community.
If you are the person who shows up, offers to help, connects people, asks how things could be better, or steps forward when something needs to be done, then you are already a Rotarian, even if you're membership status doesn't show it.
Membership is not the beginning of service. It is an opportunity to do more of it, together.