DOWAGIAC – Wearing a black suit and blue tie Thursday, Cass County Prosecutor Victor Fitz stood in front a small in the Dowagiac Elks building. Though only three of the nearly a dozen tables in the room were filled, Fitz said he hopes to soon change that.

“What I want to talk about today is membership and how we can increase that,” Fitz said, addressing his audience. “I really think we can do a lot better.”

At the group’s latest meeting, the Dowagiac Rotary Club, of which Fitz is a member, discussed what they can do to increase membership, with Fitz leading the discussion. Though the group does not have dangerously low levels of membership, attendance has been thinning in recent years, which is of concern to the club, according to Rotary President John Seculoff.

“We know that we have been seeing our numbers shrink a bit, which is a concern,” Fitz said beginning the discussion about how Rotary can bring in new members.

Having been a part of the Rotary club for 15 years, Fitz said that he has seen the membership of the group drop from nearly 80 members to less than 40 members.

“It used to be that all these tables were filled,” Fitz said, gesturing at the empty tables in the Elks building. “Part of that is that young people aren’t as involved in groups and that rotary, nationally, is struggling. … But we don’t have to be part of that fatalistic trend. We can thrive here.”

Having the Rotary club put a renewed emphasis on recruiting new members is the first to getting the Rotary club back to where members want to see it, along with increased communication between members, Fitz and Seculoff agreed. The second step would be to give new members proper orientation and mentorship.

“Our goal is to help the community, and the more people we have, the more we can do,” Seculoff said. “We are always looking to take on more or bigger projects and the easiest way to do that is to have more members. So, it is really important to us to increase our membership.”

To kick off the process, the Rotary club passed a resolution to have every member bring one new person to a club meeting, which take place at noon every Thursday at the Dowagiac Elks, by the end of July.

“It’s important that we increase our numbers, and back in the day, we had a mantra of ‘bring one.’ We all had a purpose to bring in one solid person in our group by a 12-month period,” Fitz said. “To me, that’s a common-sense way to do it. But we also have to make sure that when we get new people, we give them a reason to stay.”

Many of the Rotary members in attendance said they were in favor of renewing efforts to increase membership.

“I think it’s a really good idea,” said member Dick Judd.

Before leaving Thursday’s meeting, Fitz seemed optimistic that the rotary club could meet its new goals and attract new members.

“Let’s get out there and do it,” he said.