The Rotary Club Code of Ethics

The Rotary Club

Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 35,000+ Rotary clubs located in nearly 200 countries. Rotary International was organized in Chicago, Illinois on February 23, 1905.

The Alton Rotary Club was organized on March 1, 1921 and became the Alton/Godfrey Rotary Club in the 1970's. Rotary club membership represents a cross-section of the community's business and professional men and women. The world's Rotary clubs meet weekly and are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds. The Alton-Godfrey Rotary Club meets every Monday evening at 6:00 p.m. Check our Program Schedule page for the location and program.

The main objective of Rotary is service - in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world. Rotarians develop community service projects that address many of today's most critical issues, such as children at risk, poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, and violence. They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development. The Rotary motto is Service Above Self.

The Rotary Four Way Test

Of the things we think, say or do,

Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

The Object of Rotary

To encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:

The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
High ethical standards in business and professions; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying by each Rotarian of his/her occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
The application of the ideal of service by every Rotarian to his/her personal, business and community life;
The advancement of international understanding, good will, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional men & women united in the ideal of service.

Benefits

Making the acquaintance of people you ought to know.
Genuine, wholesome good fellowship.
Developing true and helpful friends.
Enlightenment as to other people's work, problems and successes.
Education in methods that increase efficiency.
Stimulation of your desire to be of service to society in general.
Business returns that come from enlarging your acquaintance and inspiring confidence in you and your business.

Obligations

To attend meetings regularly.
To pay your dues promptly.
To do your part when called upon.
To be a big-hearted, broad-minded person - a person of energy and action - a real person - a Rotarian.

Rotary Code of Ethics

My business standards shall have in them a note of sympathy for our common humanity. My business dealings, ambitions and relations shall always cause me to take into consideration my highest duties as a member of society. In every position in business life, in every responsibility that comes before me, my chief thought shall be to fill that responsibility and discharge that duty so when I have ended each of them, I shall have lifted the level of human ideals and achievements a little higher than I found it. In view of this, it is my duty as a Rotarian-

(1) To consider any vocation worthy and as affording me distinct opportunity to serve society.

(2) To improve myself, increase my efficiency and enlarge my service, and by doing so attest my faith in the fundamental principle of Rotary, that he/she profits most who serves the best.

(3) To realize that I am a business person and ambitious to succeed; but that I am first an ethical person and wish no success that is not founded on the highest justice and morality.

(4) To hold that the exchange of my goods, my service and my ideas for profit is legitimate and ethical, provided that all parties in the exchange are benefited thereby.

(5) To use my best endeavors to elevate the standards of the vocation in which I am engaged, and so to conduct my affairs that others in my vocation may find it wise, profitable and conducive to happiness to emulate my example.

(6) To conduct my business in such a manner that I may give a perfect service equal to or even better than my competitor, and when in doubt to give added service beyond the strict measure of debt or obligation.

(7) To understand that one of the greatest assets of a professional or of a business person is his/her friends and that any advantage gained by reason of friendship is eminently ethical and proper.

(8) To hold that true friends demand nothing of one another and that any abuse of the confidence of friendship for profit is foreign to the spirit of Rotary, and in violation of its Code of Ethics.

(9) To consider no personal success legitimate or ethical which is secured by taking unfair advantage of certain opportunities in the social order that are absolutely denied others, nor will I take advantage of opportunities to achieve material success that others will not take because of the questionable morality involved.

(10) To be not more obligated to a fellow Rotarian than I am to every other person in human society; because the genius of Rotary is not in its competition, but in its cooperation; for provincialism can never have a place in an institution like Rotary, and Rotarians assert that Human Rights are not confined to Rotary Clubs, but are as deep and as broad as the race itself; and for these high purposes does Rotary exist to educate all people and all institutions.

(11) Finally, believing in the universality of the Golden Rule, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them, we contend that Society best holds together when equal opportunity is accorded all persons in the natural resources of this planet.