Members of Rotary shall be, according to our Constitution, adults of good character and good business or professional reputation who hold a position of management or leadership within said business or profession. They shall adhere to the Object of Rotary and uphold its ideals. Membership in our Club is by invitation only and is based on the founding principles which are 102 years old and state that there shall be no more than five members per business classification per club.  This system was developed by a gentleman by the name of Paul Harris, one of the founders of Rotary in Chicago in 1905 to prevent Rotary from becoming a clique or organization dominated by any one social or economic group. Our Club in Butler celebrated its 89th Anniversary on February 1, 2009. During our rich history in Butler, our Club has had as many as 113 members and currently has 68. Rotary was originally founded as an all male organization, but in 1989 the bylaws were revised to allow the inclusion of women. Our club is comprised of 25% females.
       Rotary's motto is Service above Self, which means that we are a service organization striving to provide for the needs of others in our community, our country and in our world. Today there are Rotary Clubs in 166 countries with over 32,600 Clubs and over 1,200,000 members. We are very proud of the major accomplishment Rotarians have made to the eradication of Polio worldwide through the Rotary Polio Plus Program in conjunction with the United Nations. There has not been a reported case of polio in the Americas in the past ten years and it is hoped that by the year 2007 polio will be totally erased from the face of the earth through our funding of the polio vaccine program.