The Gap Nobody Talks About

What Ben Bauer and I discovered about youth engagement in Rotary, and why the math doesn't add up.

🎥 Watch the full conversation. This piece is a reflection from the March 2026 Membership Master Vault Series webinar. Watch the recording here →

Ben Bauer and Anniela Carracedo at the 2026 Rotary International Assembly.

Ben and I didn't prepare together for that panel. We hadn't coordinated our talking points, aligned on a narrative, or rehearsed a single answer. And yet, somewhere in the middle of that conversation, in front of Rotary leaders from across North America, we kept arriving at the same place from completely different directions.

That's what made it worth writing about.

Two different journeys

Ben came into Rotary for busi=ness connections. He owned a small printing company in Marshfield, Wisconsin, wanted access to the business community in his town, and found exactly that. For a while, that was enough, until it wasn't, and he found himself sitting at the same table with the same people, gradually showing up less.

I came in at 15, through Interact, growing up in Venezuela in the early years of a humanitarian and political crisis. Rotary wasn't a networking opportunity for me. It was a vehicle, a way to channel something I was feeling very urgently into something constructive.

Different countries. Different generations. Different reasons for walking through the door. But when the conversation turned to why we both stayed, and why so many others quietly disappear, we ended up in the same place.

The Numbers Worth Sitting With

These are different populations across different time periods, so the comparison isn't perfect. But the gap still tells us something real: we are extraordinarily good at creating meaningful experiences for young people, and extraordinarily inconsistent at staying connected to them afterward.

As President-Elect Yinkà has said, Rotary has invested deeply in youth, and done almost nothing to consciously retain them.

That's not a recruitment problem. It's a journey design problem.

"People don't stay for the reason they join" — Ben Bauer, Past District Governor, Rotary District 6250

Ben joined Rotary for business connections. He stayed because someone, almost by chance, asked him to fill in as a counselor at a RYLA camp. That was his lightbulb moment.

And that word matters: accident. It shouldn't be. We are very intentional about the entry point. We are almost entirely unintentional about what comes next.

The chemistry people kept asking us about. We didn't plan that either.

The gap is structural

Ben and I both noticed the same pattern playing out at every level, from individual clubs to entire districts. He gave a concrete example from his own district: 30 Interact clubs, hundreds of Interact students participating every year. Two Rotoract clubs.

That's not a cultural problem. That's a structural one. A place where the journey simply stops, not because young people lose interest, but because no clear next step is waiting for them.

The Rotary pathway, at its best, looks something like this: Interact → RYLA → Youth Exchange → Rotoract → Rotary membership. Followed through intentionally, it's a seven-to eight-year journey that produces deeply committed, values-aligned members.

But that journey only works if every bridge is actually built.

Right now, many of them aren't.

What Young People Actually Want

I want to be clear about something, because I think it gets misunderstood.

Young people, and I say this as someone who is 24, don't need Rotary to be completely different. We're not asking you to reinvent the organization.

We need someone to walk us into it.

The values are right. The programs are extraordinary. The global network is unlike anything else in the world. What's missing isn't the product, it's the continuity between experiences. The intentional hand-off from one chapter of the journey to the next.

And that's actually good news, because continuity is a systems problem. And systems can be designed.

A Final Reflection

What struck me most about that conversation with Ben wasn't any single insight. It was the fact that two people, different generations, different countries, different reasons for being in Rotary at all, kept arriving at the same place.

That's not a coincidence. That's a pattern. And patterns in a global organization of 1.2 million members are worth paying attention to.

We don't need more programs. We don't need more ideas.

We need to be more intentional with what we already have.

What does the gap look like in your club or district? I'd genuinely like to hear, drop it in the comments below.