I will preface this by saying that the below is what is prevalent in the United States only and not Rotary International in the rest of the World.
Rotary policy is to induct the most prestigious member from the business group of a the community. This means that they want as a member the doctor that is Head of Staff at the local Hospital, or if there were 3 car dealerships in town, the owner of the dealership that sold the most prestigious car brand. Today, in many communities, they are just happy to get members from any business. How they raise the funds that they use to pay for different projects vary from club to club. Some more affluent clubs might just ask their members for donations and some clubs do fund raising projects. Rotary International doesn't tell a local club how they must operate, but gives guidelines to work within. In the States, women have been allowed to join Rotary clubs, unlike any other part of the world, and that has made a big difference in the way clubs operate and the make up of the membership. Suffice it to say, that today, many of the clubs that did have an elite membership roll, no longer have such a impressive list of members. Many of the long time members of Rotary in the U.S. have left the organization as a silent form of protest to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed women into Rotary. The interesting thing is that the same standard was not applied to other men or women only organizations. As an example, I couldn't join a organization known as "Women in Business", not that I would want to. For some unknown reason to me, some U.S. women feel that if it is a mens only organization, they are compelled to force themselves into joining it against the will of the men that belong to the organization. This action ultimately leads to the ultimate diminishing of the value of the organization as a social entity. There are those that might not agree with me, but I believe that sometimes an all mens organization or all womens organization has more merit that a mixed sex organization. Personally, I don't want to attend a business "persons" meeting and be sitting at a table with two women that decide that they want to talk about laundry detergent or share their kids latest school pictures. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
I retired from Rotary after 25 years of 100% attendance when the incoming president was a woman that joined the club a year before, and attended less than 50% of the meetings. She was appointed the president elect by the outgoing president, who was also a woman. Nepotism at its finest!