Rotary Club of Gold Coast Passport, Australia Makes Space for Nomads

by Brad Webber

Gig work, experts say, is here to stay, and many people — freelancers, consultants, start-up mavens — are turning to co-working spaces. The best of these flexible office spaces foster an environment where professionals can share their ideas, brainstorm new ones, and network. The Rotary Club of Gold Coast Passport does all of those things when it meets at Karma Collab Hub, one of the most magically situated co-working spaces on Australia’s Gold Coast.

“It’s our recruitment ground,” says Candice Olivier, a past club president and the co-owner of the meeting location. With a distillery next door and the Coral Sea a block away — surfboard optional — the club says that “a new wave of volunteering has come ashore” for young professionals.

Olivier was at a networking session for young professionals in 2019 when she met Andy Rajapakse, at that time the governor-nominee of District 9640; the things he told her began to dispel her notion of Rotary as something “for retirees.” Rajapakse has led the charge to attract younger members to the district; he added 12 clubs — seven Rotary, three Rotaract, an Interact, and one for Rotary Youth Exchange alumni — in 2020-21, during his year as governor.

Olivier and Rajapakse “had a big conversation around volunteering,” Olivier says. “I expressed my pain point as a young volunteer”: rigid club requirements and continuing commitments. “I told him I wasn’t joining a once-a-week club.” Rajapakse countered by suggesting she start a club for young professionals and telling her about passport clubs, a flexible alternative to traditional clubs.

Kasia Brzezicka, the current club president, became a charter member about a year after relocating from Sydney. Brzezicka had investigated Rotary by attending a club that meets for breakfast, but had also demurred because of the weekly obligation. “When the passport club organizers came to me and said, ‘We don’t meet every week and it’s going to be full of young people who want to make change in the world,’ I was like, ‘Yup, I’m in.’”

The club, which meets on the last Tuesday evening of each month, “was positioned to attract this demographic on their terms,” Rajapakse says. “None of these members would have looked at Rotary if not for this model.”

Rajapakse directed $2,500 in district public image funds to place an advertorial for the club in the inflight magazine of Jetstar Airways, a budget carrier that caters to a younger set. “It definitely got us traction,” says Olivier. “We got a lot of feedback.”

While winning over people who had little awareness of Rotary, the club has also attracted some who have deeper roots. Guy Murphy, a Rotary Youth Exchange alum whose father was a Rotarian, says: “I thought I was too young and irrelevant to join Rotary. I wouldn’t be able to connect with anybody on my level demographically” — until he learned two friends had joined the Gold Coast club. “I felt it was a chance to give back to Rotary what it had given to me.”

From the outset, the club shed a few Australian Rotary standbys. “We were adamant about not falling into the traditional trap,” says Olivier. “Singing the national anthem before every meeting, having to attend a weekly meeting, and feeling bound by needing to attend.” Another nonstarter, she adds, was a familiar fundraising event Down Under, a sausage cookout known as a “sizzle.” Instead, the club holds social gatherings and organizes fun runs and similar events.

“A lot of millennials want to volunteer and want an easy way to volunteer. That’s what we’re providing them,” says Brzezicka. She cites members’ embrace of Baby Give Back, a nonprofit that provides needed items to families with infants and young children, as illustrative of the club’s capabilities. Club members help out in one of the organization’s warehouses on a weekly basis, unpacking trucks and sorting donated goods. “We all know each other now, so it’s not just volunteering, it’s a social get-together.”

The dynamic approach to volunteering allows the members to tailor their own experiences. “It’s not like everyone has to do everything,” says Brzezicka, who stresses that club leadership roles, always time-consuming when done properly, count toward the club’s recommended, but unenforced, minimum 30 hours of annual service. Projects focus on areas that include the environment, homelessness, and youth.

Taking the passport concept to heart, the club partners with traditional clubs in the area, with members sharing their energy and technological expertise. They rebooted a Facebook marketing campaign for a nearby club and helped it host networking events to recruit members. Jessica Hall, a marketing specialist, sees the mutual benefit for clubs with different age demographics that work together. “It can work in harmony,” she says, “with older generations teaching,” as well as the other way around. “It’s a question of how you teach us and keep us engaged.”

The club’s casual meetings feature wine, cheese, and other nibbles. Recently, some 20 pajama-clad members gathered for a meeting themed around a children’s clothing drive. Members might also find themselves taking part in challenges, such as one that required participants to drink from a straw for a week to raise awareness and funds for a research team that is developing a therapy to treat spinal cord injuries. (For the record, the club has a zero plastic-waste policy.)

Meetings devote 15 minutes or so to speakers from community groups, and a member spotlight allows members to discuss their own work — professional and otherwise. During the pajama session, Adrian Nathaniel, a financial adviser, discussed ethical investing.

The club’s focus on professional achievement and on allowing members to set their own volunteering course has driven member satisfaction, but the club doesn’t take retention for granted. “We have a strong process for nurturing our members,” Oli-vier notes. Each member gets a call every month to discuss their well-being and how they are currently feeling in the club.

The club is dedicated to the same thing that led Paul Harris to start the first Rotary club, Olivier notes: Networking. “We are aware of that history.”

This story originally appeared in the October 2021 issue of Rotary magazine.