Bearers, joists and belonging

September-October 2026

Sitting in the clubhouse of our 11-year-old’s soccer club, I have been staring at a blank screen for a good 30 minutes now.

Membership. It’s not a particularly sexy topic, is it. If public image is the equivalent of perfectly plumped lounge cushions, then membership is like bearers and joists. Necessary to support your home, but not exciting like travertine tiles and brushed brass tapware.

The unfortunate reality is, however, you can’t have pretty fixtures without a solid foundation.

I know this because we are two months into renovating our new (44-year-old) home and it seems the original owners didn’t care too much for tedious things like foundations. In fact, they actively removed them and replaced them with threadbare support poles… our entire right front corner is teetering on a precarious one-centimetre piece of pine.

Unsurprisingly, our new (44-year-old) house is sinking, and our members (read hubby) are threatening to throw their hands up and leave. All the pretty upgrades we had mood boarded and Three Birds Styling Schooled (bye, bye travertine, tapware and timber floors) have gone up in smoke because our time, money and energy has been relegated to our foundations.

Personal grievances aside (who needs support pillars anyway), what does this all mean for membership? It’s the age-old conundrum of the chicken and the egg. To create beautiful things – clean water and sanitation, education for all, peace, a polio-free world – we first need to build strong foundations to support them. Members. But to attract members, we need to show them beautiful things.

Or do we? Do we just need to show them the potential for beautiful things? Beautiful things they have already envisaged, which Rotary can help them create.

My eyes drift back to the football field; 200-odd aspiring Messis (or Ronaldos) training their little hearts out. It’s an academy club; (arguably) our city’s most sort after. So much so that hundreds of potential champions are turned away every year. Why are so many so desperate to join this particular club when many others are failing? Reputation? Track record? The opportunity to be part of something great?

Ultimately, they are all here for the win – the game, the title, the contract (apparently you need to think about these things at 11)… the dream. But dreams need teams. Shiny individual parts don’t win trophies or create legacies. Building a sense of purpose and support, knowing that each role makes up the whole to work towards beautiful things (world titles, world peace, integrally sound walls) – this is what belonging means. This is the beauty of membership… not forms, attendance sheets or the rustle of meeting minutes.

Because people don’t join numbers. They join people. They join causes. They join because someone made them feel welcome, useful and part of something worthwhile.

And as for the potential for beautiful things? Perhaps I didn’t quite nail that analogy. Make sure you’re selling your buyers something built on strong foundations (and tell them to get their own independent evaluation). Then, as I promised my mood board (and my hubby), beautiful things will follow!

Meagan Martin
Editor, Rotary Down Under