What is Rotary? Founder Paul P. Harris Clarifies In The Very First Issue of Rotary International’s Newsletter

The true Rotary spirit is not the selfish one of trying to see how much you can get out of your fellow members but the more altruistic one of trying to see how much benefit and good you can do for your fellow members. As each one tries to give business to someone else in the club or influence business to someone else in the club, he finds that there is a law of compensation and his reward comes from the fact that someone else is giving business or influencing
business to him.

Rotary does not necessarily require a direct exchange of business between any two members. A may be able to give business to B without being situated so as to receive any return from B but B may be able to do something of value for C and C in turn may be able to patronize A. This is the rotation of business. As each Rotarian undertakes to help his brother Rotarians without demanding a direct return to him from them, there is produced a condition of friendship and fellowship upon a higher plane than the usual selfish and sordid relationships of commercial life.

According to the local temperaments of the residents of the different cities of the country there is some difference in the conduct of the various Rotary Clubs. Some are particularly strong for civic work, for the betterment and building up of the communities in which they are located. Some clubs make a strong feature of sociability and good-fellowship. In some cities formal dress suit dinners are not unusual, others are emphatically informal. In any event
the predominating idea is one of service-to the community, to the club, or to the individual members. THERE IS NO PLACE FOR DRONES IN THE ROTARY HIVES. ROTARIANS ARE ALL BUSY BEES.

In all the clubs as there is but one man admitted from each line of business there is no business jealousy among the members and there is no prudery about avowing and advertising one’s business in the club. In Rotary Club things are
done openly and frankly that in other clubs must be done subrosa. Rotary Clubs are composed of men who are old enough to know how to do business and young enough to want more business to do. Rotary has proved that business and brotherhood will mix. In brief a Rotary Club is one kind of thing – every other club is something else.