Rotary seeking input on club, services

LIMA - Most Lima Rotary members know exactly what the club does and stands for. Now they're trying to find out if anyone else does.

Rotary members are working with senior marketing majors at Ohio Northern University to study the community's knowledge and perception of the Rotary and other service clubs. This week, they began circulating a survey they hope will tell them how much their neighbors know about what they do and why they do it.

"The survey looks at both the purposes and service of the clubs. In general, we want to know the community's perceptions of those service clubs and what they do," said Dick Schroeder, president-elect of the Lima Rotary.

The survey is available online through LimaOhio.com and is being e-mailed to members' businesses e-mail lists. The five-minute survey covers a range of issues, from general knowledge of local clubs to specific events they sponsor and support. It is designed to provide information not just on the Rotary club, but on other local service groups, including Sertoma, Optimists and the Exchange Club.

"Hopefully, this will be a piece of information that is helpful to the Rotary Club and other clubs as well. We plan to share this with them," Schroeder said.

The ONU students will compile the information and provide a preliminary assessment and some interpretation of the collected data within the next three weeks or so, Schroeder said. After that, there is a possibility of follow-up by another class in the spring.

"It's a great opportunity for the students to get real-time experience and for us to tap into the local educational facilities," Schroeder said.

The end result will hopefully be a better sense of how the community perceives the clubs and what they can do to improve that perception. Schroeder likened the process to the community branding effort the Lima Allen County Chamber of Commerce is undertaking.

"Our hope would be that we would learn something from the exercise about how people perceive the way we conduct ourselves and how we're marketing ourselves. It will let us see if they are aware of the clubs and how they are contributing to the strength of the community or whether that's just sort of out there and unconnected," Schroeder said.