Our History
The Rotary Club of Canberra Sundowners (the Canberra Sundowners) chartered as a Rotary club on 20 August 2021. We had been working towards this goal for a number of years. A brief history of the club is provided below.
The challenge
Toward the end of 2015, then District Governor Monica Garrett approached the Rotary Club of Canberra Sunrise with a challenge to launch a satellite club focussed on attracting younger members. The Canberra Sunrise Board, then led by President Peter Hill, accepted the challenge and began planning and recruiting activities to identify the minimum of eight members required to form a satellite club. Claire Scott took on the role as the first Chair of the Canberra Sundowners satellite club.

A primary driver for DG Monica's challenge was the declining membership across many clubs in our district (and Rotary across the board) and the observation that many traditional clubs were not offering an attractive and sufficiently flexible environment for younger members. Less administration, more hands-on community service and greater flexibility were key goals for the new club.
While at the time we were looking for ways to attract younger members, members of any age were welcome to join our club. We sought to offer an informal, more hands-on community service approach that included loads of fun. It took time and a great deal of effort to build numbers and to establish plans for the satellite club and we tried a number of approaches.

A flyer we used in 2016 to seek out new members.
Forming a satellite club
By January 2017 we had recruited sufficient members to become a satellite club. On 23 February 2017 the Rotary Club of Canberra Sundowners was established as a satellite club within the Rotary Club of Canberra Sunrise.
It is a great credit to Claire Scott that she had the vision and commitment to lead this activity to fruition and to become the Sundowners' initial Chair. Other foundation members included Nick Scholar, Sam Saunders, Gus McBride, Philippa Butler, Kate Wiencke and Ash Jensen.

Chartering as a Rotary club
After a further four years, working hard to build up club numbers and to establish ourselves in our local community, we chartered as an independent Rotary club on 20 August 2021. This was a great achievement, seeing us double our membership in about 12 months, culminating a lot of hard work by our members.
Our charter night celebrations were delayed until February 2022 due to COVID-19. They went off with a bang with over 150 members, friends and family and Rotarians from near and far joining us to kick off our journey as a Rotary club. It was a night to remember!