Sakuji Tanaka was the President of Rotary International in 2012-13. In addition to his Rotary Service, he served as the Chairman of the Daika Company and President of the National Household Papers Distribution Association of Japan.

When Tanaka was President-Elect, he published “100 Hints on How to Strengthen Rotary Clubs.” Here, I offer ten of those hints.

1. Have more focused service activities.
2. Create an atmosphere that is friendly and that makes it easy to communicate with one another.
3. Provide training for those with less than 5 years as a member. In order to develop future leaders, it is necessary to enhance member education and training.
4. Recruit business associates, friends, relatives, and neighbors who share your interests and who have a sense of fairness, are ethical, and willing to serve.
5. Provide a suggestion box to encourage any question, idea, or opinion from members. Make sure the appropriate committee would provide responses.
6. Constantly keep having interesting service projects and club meetings in mind.
7. If possible, encourage spouses to come to club meetings once a month or several times a year.
8. Be generous in commending on people’s actions, services, achievements, accomplishments, celebrations, tasks completed, and kindness.
9. Approach different people and greet them at club meetings.
10. Attend meetings with the attitude that one can always learn from others.

Keep these hints in mind as we attend meetings and work on service projects. If you’d like to see all 100 hints, contact me.