The Bonners Ferry Rotary has seen a surge of new members this year, so much so that in May, meeting organizers had to relocate the twice-monthly meetings from Muggsy’s Bar & Grill to the large Ktunaxa Room at the Kootenai River Inn. 

At the July 17 meeting, the Rotary inducted nine new members, the most inductions at a single meeting that Bonners Ferry Rotary president Sandy Johnstone can recall. 

The inductees were Frank Bazzar, Debbie Magee, John Miller, Sheryl Neal, Pat Jackson, Andrew McCrory, Sarah Fischer, Ted Ludlum and Rick Phebus. 

Membership growth in the Bonners Ferry Rotary defies broad trends in American civic engagement within formal social clubs.  

Since the late 1900s, the prevailing involvement in civic associations has been through mailing list memberships, where members never actually meet. Participation in face-to-face organizations such as Rotary, on the other hand, has sharply declined during that same period, according to organizational records, survey reports, time diaries, consumer expenditures and more, writes Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam in his book, “Bowling Alone.” 

The sustainment and growth of the Bonners Ferry Rotary provides an element of community that has been lost in the transition from face-to-face to mailing list associations. The Bonners Ferry Rotary meets at the Ktunaxa Room in town, for example, whereas mailing list associations, such as the American Association of Retired Persons, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., a place where many its roughly 38 million members may never visit. 

The Bonners Ferry Rotary also caters very specifically to the needs of the local community. It provides community work, such as the park cleanup; community events, such as the Easter egg hunt and the community breakfast; thousands of dollars in scholarship donations to local students; and twice-monthly meetings that connect community members to one another, which creates “social capital” that is key for the strength of any community, Putnam writes. 

“My wife and I moved up here about 12 years ago, and it’s easy to get into a little isolated group and never expand out,” said inductee Ted Ludlum, podcast host of Almost Paradise in North Idaho, at the July 17 meeting. “I just saw the Rotary as an opportunity to meet some people I never met, get more into the community, get more involved and maybe make a difference.”