Rotary is very active in my small town. My next door neighbor is an officer and I know they do a lot of good work. This however I know is not going to sit well with the local club. This is a rural area with a lot of hunting and target shooting and very high gun ownership rates. Was just down to the local street fair and in addition to a couple of gun centric booths one of the local churches was raffling off an AR15. The local car dealer had a promotion where you got a gun with a new car a couple of years back and it is not unusual to see people open carry. I myself bought a ticket at a gun raffle the local Mason Lodge had. It will be interesting to see how this pans out locally. As for membership declines I think like other fraternals they have been having them but a lot of factors play in to thatincluding relatively high dues for a comparatively poor area.
In my area, it seemed like Rotary was at its peak when the towns were smaller and most of the business owners lived locally. Now, most of the people in my town commute to work in nearby big towns or New York City — so they’ve lost touch with the local business community here.