Service Above Self

Our Mission

The Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island’s mission is to provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance local community and world understanding, goodwill, and peace through a fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders.

Solving real problems takes real commitment and vision. For more than 75 years, Rotary’s people of action have used their passion, energy, and intelligence to take action on sustainable projects for our island community and beyond. We are always working to better our world, and we stay committed to the end.

Our Four-Way Test

The Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships. The test has been translated into more than 100 languages, and Rotarians recite it at club meetings. It is one of the world’s most widely printed and quoted statements of business ethics.

We Are Part of a World-Wide Team

Our Club is a member of Rotary International that has member clubs throughout the world. Like us, the mission of Rotary International is to provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through its fellowship.

Rotary International recognizes the value of diversity within its individual clubs. It encourages clubs to assess those in their communities who are eligible for membership, under existing membership guidelines, and to endeavor to include the appropriate range of individuals in their clubs. Rotary International states that a club that reflects its community with regard to professional and business classification, gender, age, religion, and ethnicity is a club with the key to its own future.

Rotary History

Paul P. Harris

Rotary International is a 1.2 million-member organization started with the vision of one man —

Paul P. Harris. The Chicago attorney formed one of the world’s first service organizations, the Rotary Club of Chicago, on 23 February 1905 as a place where professionals with diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and form meaningful, lifelong friendships. Rotary’s name came from the group’s early practice of rotating meetings among the offices of each member.

The first Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island meeting was held on July 1, 1947, at Lynwood Center. Our Club was chartered on October 8, 1947, sponsored by the Seattle #4 Rotary Club. We became part of Rotary District 5020 that includes Vancouver Island and Western Washington.

Some of the Club’s landmark accomplishments locally have been funding the construction of the Bainbridge Public Library, the Waypoint, Rotary Field and other significant parks and recreational facilities.