03/29/2026
WHO’S CARRYING THE BATON?
Why Every Rotary Club Needs a Champion
Yesterday, at the Rotary District 5910 Spring Assembly in Huntsville, Texas, I had the opportunity to spend the day with incoming presidents, directors, and officers from across the district.
The sessions were strong. The speakers were prepared. The content was solid.
But if I am being frank, the most important leadership lesson did not come from the front of the room. It came from hallway conversations.
Coffee in hand. Between sessions. Talking through the real work of leading a Rotary club.
One word kept surfacing again and again.
Accountability.
Not in a corporate sense. Not heavily. Not formally. Just a simple, practical question that every club wrestles with at some point.
Who is responsible for this?
Every Rotary club I know wants the same things.
A strong and updated website. Healthy membership growth. Consistent branding and storytelling. Successful fundraising. Meaningful support of The Rotary Foundation.
The intent is always there. But too often, these priorities live in a space where everyone owns them. And when everyone owns something, it often means no one truly owns it. That is when things begin to drift.
The website becomes outdated. Membership becomes a talking point instead of a strategy. Fundraising ideas get discussed but never fully executed. Branding becomes inconsistent. Foundation giving becomes something we circle back to, rather than something we build.
Not because people do not care. Because ownership is unclear.
One of the simplest ideas we talked about yesterday is also one of the most powerful.
Every priority needs a champion. Not a committee. Not a vague assignment. Not something we all agree to keep an eye on.
A champion. Someone who wakes up thinking about it. Someone who keeps it moving. Someone who notices when it stalls and nudges it forward again.
In many organizations, this aligns with the RACI model. It simply asks who is responsible and who is accountable.
That level of clarity changes everything.
Here is where Rotary gets it right, and sometimes where we hesitate.
The champion does not have to be an officer.
Some of the best champions I have seen are not listed on the board roster at all.
They are the member who naturally keeps the website up to date. The connector who brings in new people. The storyteller who elevates the club’s presence. The quiet advocate who believes deeply in The Rotary Foundation.
Leadership in Rotary has never been about titles. It has always been about ownership.
Research supports this idea. Organizational scholars such as Henry Mintzberg have long noted that informal leadership roles often drive real outcomes more than formal structure. In volunteer organizations, that truth becomes even more important.
You cannot rely on authority. You have to rely on ownership.
There is also a practical side to this.
Studies on team effectiveness, including the work of Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, show that people perform better when their roles are clear and tied to meaningful outcomes.
In plain terms, people show up stronger when they know what they own.
That applies just as much in a Rotary club as it does in any high-performing organization.
If you are stepping into a leadership role this year, you do not need a complicated system to apply this.
Start with a simple conversation at your next board meeting.
Who is the champion for our website?
Who is the champion for membership?
Who is the champion for fundraising?
Who is the champion for branding and storytelling?
Who is the champion for The Rotary Foundation?
Write the names down. Say them out loud. Make sure those individuals know they own it.
Clarity creates movement, and confusion creates drift.
What stood out to me most in Huntsville was not frustration. It was awareness.
Every leader I spoke with knew what their club needed.
The opportunity is not for more ideas. It is not more planning. It is clearer ownership.
Because when someone owns it, it moves.
AUTHOR’S BOW
I have learned over the years that most organizations do not struggle because they lack good people or good ideas.
They struggle in the space between intention and ownership.
Rotary is full of people who care. That has never been the question. The question is who is carrying the baton.
If that answer is not clear, that is the place to start. It is simple. It is practical. And it works.
Sometimes the best leadership lessons are not found in the session itself but in the quiet hallway conversations in places like Huntsville, Texas.
ENDNOTES
Henry Mintzberg, Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations (Prentice-Hall, 1983). Mintzberg’s work highlights that real organizational effectiveness often depends on informal roles and decentralized ownership rather than rigid hierarchy.
Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization (Harvard Business School Press, 1993). Their research emphasizes that high-performing teams succeed when individuals have clear roles, mutual accountability, and shared purpose.
Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Jossey-Bass, 2002). Lencioni identifies lack of accountability as a core dysfunction that limits team effectiveness, reinforcing the need for clear ownership.
Bridgespan Group, “Nonprofit Organizational Effectiveness: The Role of Clear Accountability” (various publications). Bridgespan’s research consistently shows that nonprofit organizations perform better when roles and ownership are clearly defined, especially in volunteer-driven environments.
Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide).Introduces responsibility assignment frameworks such as RACI, which clarify who is responsible and accountable for key initiatives.
