The lunch meeting I attended took place a few Tuesdays back, but it could have been set, very comfortably, in the 1950s or 1960s. Yet there I was in 2001, at a suburban steak-and-chop house called Pal's Cabin, where the Montclair, N.J., Rotary Club gathers every week. The president of the 30-member chapter, insurance broker Geff Sanford, struck a bell to begin and then led the group in pledging allegiance to the U.S. flag and singing "My country, 'tis of thee." After the Reverend Beverly Sullivant's invocation, the guests, including me, were welcomed with another song. "Rotarily we say, come back again!" the club crooned. Next up, the requisite announcements about national Rotary doings and local community-service projects, followed by a ritual called Happy Dollars, in which members hand over a buck and tell why they're glad (a graduation, a Yankee win) or maybe sad (a sick friend). The main event? A report on the Rotaplast mission, in which surgeons jetted down to a poor province of Argentina to treat people with cleft palates. I had just finished my coffee when Sanford hit the bell again to wrap it up.

"Definitely old-fashioned," says a smiling Sullivant after the meeting. No kidding. But then, so are the rest of the customs that have won Rotary International 1.2 million members, including 400,000 here in the States. Founded in Chicago in 1905 as the original business networking group, Rotary evolved into something more: a worldwide collection of service clubs that can boast of good works ranging from scholarships and youth programs to $407 million worth of polio vaccinations. If it were the 1950s, you might say Rotary was the Cadillac of community clubs, a list that includes the likes of the Lions and Kiwanis. Not that Rotarians do much boasting. The style at this membership-by-invitation group has traditionally been as understated as its premise: Regularly convene a community's top leaders--business owners, executives, educators, municipal officials, physicians, lawyers, clergy--and they will weave a seamless fabric of community service, fellowship, and subtle but significant business connections.

What led me to Pal's Cabin? I was hoping to find out how Rotary, once such a powerful symbol of business' role in towns across America, was faring in a faster, more complicated world. The ubiquitous roadside signs that greet folks passing through towns are still there, but who belongs these days? What role do they play in their communities? Is Rotary updating itself to fit the times?

A Slow Decline
Why a big club gets smaller
As you can surmise from the membership figures, Rotary still has some clout. This is a big organization, with an expense budget of $186 million, 7,530 clubs in the U.S. alone, and a name that's still sterling if a little dusty. Yet all is not well. Worldwide, the organization's membership has plateaued in recent years; in the U.S. it's down about 4% since its peak in 1996. Meanwhile, members' average age has steadily increased, ambitious people aren't joining as they once did, and minorities are still underrepresented. Social trends like two-career families and long commutes have undermined all the service clubs. But at tradition-heavy Rotary, the task of reinvention may be the trickiest.

Frank Devlyn, who completed his year as Rotary International's president in July, sees hope in several changes, including higher-profile public relations and experiments with new club formats. Most significant is the growing prominence of women, who have moved up fast since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 compelled Rotary to admit them. Women now account for 20% of U.S. Rotarians. Devlyn even makes a pitch that harks back to the club's earliest days. "Entrepreneurs," he says, "should know that joining Rotary will enhance their business and give them more credibility." But attitudes born back when a Rotary lapel pin was a sure-fire status symbol can be tough to combat. "The vast majority of Rotarians don't invite other people to belong," says Devlyn. "They come in and they're jealous."

Paul Harris would not approve. It was Harris, a young lawyer, who founded Rotary in Chicago around the start of the last century. Lonely in the big city, he tried to re-create the trust and fellowship he'd known in small-town Vermont by forming a club with three friends. The site of the weekly meetings rotated, giving the club its name. Harris' emphasis on ethics and his vocational rule--that each club should have only one member of a given profession--proved a popular formula. Over the next half-century Rotary took root all over the world, was on hand for the birth of the United Nations, and began its many international-exchange programs.

The 1950s found Rotary at the hub of many an American town. Then as now, overt business talk was banned at meetings. But it was the connections that counted. In a typical club in a medium-sized city, you might find the cigar-smoking president of the biggest local bank, the owner of the department store, the local utility manager, and so forth. Today the cigars are gone. And so are the independent bank, the local department store, and the monopoly utility. Where does that leave Rotary?

The Meeting Will Come to Order

There's a world of clubs out there. Fraternal groups like Odd Fellows date back more than a century; sales-lead clubs like LeTip are new on the scene. But four organizations have long stood out. All were formed in the early 1900s, all combine community service with socializing and business networking--and all are trying to adapt in a changing world.