Come as a guest
The short answer
Rotary is a worldwide network of local clubs. Members meet regularly, become friends and run service projects in their own towns and overseas. There are more than 46,000 clubs and about 1.2 million members. Each club runs itself, picks its own projects and sets its own dues. Rotary Club of Broward, chartered in Fort Lauderdale in March 2026, is for people who want the friendships and the impact without the formality.
Key takeaways
- A Rotary club is a local group that meets weekly. It is not a charity you mail a check to.
- Members are business owners, professionals and neighbors of every age. Rotary is nonpartisan and nonreligious.
- Clubs choose their own projects inside seven global areas of focus.
- Rotary's best-known work is the campaign that has cut polio by 99.9 percent since 1988.
- You can visit any club as a guest, usually for free, before you decide anything.
The one-minute version
Paul Harris, a Chicago lawyer, started the first club in 1905 so that professionals from different trades could meet, trust each other and do business honestly. The name came from rotating the meeting between members' offices. Service projects followed within a few years and never stopped.
Today Rotary International is the umbrella organization in Evanston, Illinois. The clubs are where everything happens. Each one is a self-governing nonprofit with its own officers, meeting schedule, projects and personality, grouped into districts. Rotary Club of Broward is in District 6990, which covers Broward, Miami-Dade, the Keys and the Bahamas.
What members do
In rough order of time spent: they meet, usually once a week, often with a guest speaker who is doing something interesting nearby. They hang out, because the friendships are what keep people coming. And they serve: beach cleanups, care kits, food drives, scholarships, grants for clean water or vaccines overseas.
In this club a typical month is four Tuesday morning meetings, one Social with a Purpose and one hands-on project. Nobody takes attendance the way clubs did decades ago. You come for what you care about.
Easier than reading about it: come to a meeting. Come as a guest
Come as a guestWhy this club meets the way it does
Rotary's average member age has been rising for years, and Rotary International has made reaching people in their twenties and thirties a global priority. Rotary Club of Broward answered with a schedule that works for people who work.
Rotary Club of Broward meets at 7:00 AM on Tuesdays so the meeting ends before your workday starts, runs most meetings online, and does its socializing where you already go: taco night in Wilton Manors, a burger mixer in Coral Springs, happy hour on Fort Lauderdale Beach. The projects are hands on and local. The people are worth knowing.
What Rotary is not
It is not a secret society. There is no initiation beyond a handshake and a pin. It is not political: clubs do not endorse candidates or take sides on partisan issues. It is not religious. And it is not a sales group. The Four-Way Test, which Rotarians apply to everything they say and do, starts with the question 'Is it the truth?'
Sources
- Rotary International: About Rotary www.rotary.org/en/about-rotary
- Rotary International: History www.rotary.org/en/about-rotary/history
- Rotary International: Our causes www.rotary.org/en/our-causes
- End Polio Now www.endpolio.org
- Rotary District 6990 rotary6990.org