Rotary’s Entrepreneurship

The ambition to do good in the world must be the main motivation of the Rotarian entrepreneur and without any doubt the only one that really counts.

The Rotarian entrepreneur is the one that by his pertinent action makes the difference, dare, although with some risk, to think differrently and innovate. Although the word entrepreneurship is new in the dictionaries this concept started to be analyzed on its most various angles since the XVII century.

The humanitarian and educational projects are enterprises that allows the fulfill of these actions, mainly when leveraged by The Rotary Foundation grants, by using not only the knowledge of the needs of the community we serve, but also the ability and capability to organize the necessary human resources, the adequate financial funding from partners and sometimes even to improvise.

The medicine of happiness that is put to work by the Rotarian entrepreneur implies that they utilize their abilities, as promoter of new ideas, as builder, manager and developer of these projects in a light, precise, quick, transparent and visible way.

These values when connected to the execution of the enterprise have lightness as an essential characteristic. The projects executed by protagonist Rotarians must have a dry and simple execution structure, with the greatest possible use of the talents available within the club or the district.

The deepest tool of information technology and of the social media allows that these projects be known almost at the same time by the organizers and the partners either nationally or internationally. The competition for financial resources dedicated to philanthropic projects is every day tougher, particularly by scarcity of good projects that motivates people or organizations to invest on them.

To answer with precision the needs that originated the elaboration of the project, utilizing with sustainability and in an adequate form the financial and material resources collected and personalizing the service rendered, lives the beneficiary pleased.

This precision is also related to the transparency of the use of the resources in order that they could be easily audited and traced. Every cent given to the project must be diligently applied on it.

The visibility is also needed to allow that we could spread the information of the service we rendered, guarantying the propagation of the true image of what our organization does to the general public. The image derived from well concluded projects. We have to articulate in a simple way what we do with the resources applied and put in service, to allow current and new partners to wish to join their resources to ours, in future projects.

The multiplicity of opportunities to serve must motivate the Rotarian’s entrepreneurs to exercise their abilities and talents that were seen on them when they were detected by their sponsors and invited to join Rotary and use them.

The business world is full of examples of entrepreneurs. One well known is of Howard Schultz that living in New York and working on a domestic appliances distributor became motivated by a Seattle company that was selling coffee beans. When he tried to expand the business to deal with drinkable coffee he spoke to 242 investors and

217 of them told him that the idea will not work. He then persisted with the idea on a small company, bought the control of the original Starbuck and transformed it with his entrepreneurship in a multibillion company. Another example is of a family in the state of Goiás, Brazil, that started their business by bottling smashed garlic with salt. With the entrepreneurship of its founders it became a successful company on the food spices, Arisco. From putting smashed garlic and salt on a bottle!!

There are many Rotarian entrepreneurs in our clubs and that we have to give them credit and value. This is a characteristic that we have to look for in prospective Rotarians that could join us with their visionary and operational capabilities, become Rotarians and share their talents with the members of our clubs.

Believe in your ideas and become a entrepreneur Rotarian.

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