What is Rotary?
A global fellowship with a Lexington address.
Rotary is business and professional people, united worldwide, who take on humanitarian service, keep a high ethical standard, and practice goodwill as if it were a trade.
The idea
Service Above Self, practiced weekly.
Rotary clubs meet weekly. They are non-political, non-sectarian, and open across culture, race, and creed. Membership is a way to be useful in your own town and connected to an international network of people who do the same in theirs.
The world’s first Rotary club gathered in Chicago in 1905. The idea was simple: professionals would rotate meetings among their offices, become friends, and put their vocations to work for the community. That idea crossed an ocean, then a century. It reached this river town on April 23, 1926.
Lexington Rotary — Club 2377, District 6040 — has met through depression, war, flood, and boom. On April 23, 2026 the club marked one hundred years. The 2026–27 Rotary year asks us to create lasting impact.
In Lexington
A hundred years in a town that keeps its stories.
Lexington sits on a bluff above the Missouri, the seat of Lafayette County, with a courthouse that still carries a Civil War cannonball in a column. It is a small place with a long memory. Rotary has been part of that civic furniture since Coolidge was in the White House.
We do not pretend to have the minutes from 1926 on this page. What we do have is continuity: weekly lunch, a classification of vocations, a habit of asking whether a thing is true and fair and kind, and projects that look like Rotary at work — shoes and socks for Buckner Shoes for Orphan Souls, books, scholarships, a gift to End Polio Now, a Saturday packing food.
The photograph at right is the club being chartered in 1926. If you have more officer lists, or a story from a parent who sat at this table, the secretary would like them. A century deserves a better archive, and we are building one.
Service in this town
The work you will actually be asked to do.
Shoes for Orphan Souls
We collect new shoes and socks for Buckner Shoes for Orphan Souls, an international project. Rotary District 6040 has partnered on this drive for 25 years. As of this year the district has collected more than 500,000 pairs of shoes, plus socks and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, for children around the world.
buckner.org/shoesDictionary project
Third graders in local classrooms receive a dictionary of their own — a small book, a lasting habit of looking things up.
Scholarships
We help Lexington and Lafayette County seniors take the next step toward trade school, community college, or university.
End Polio Now
Rotary is a founding member of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), alongside UNICEF, the CDC, WHO, the Gates Foundation, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and governments of the world. Together they have immunized more than 3 billion children in 122 countries. Lexington Rotary still gives every year. The job is not finished until it is.
endpolio.orgFood and holiday help
Thanksgiving boxes, Christmas support, and quiet help when a family in town hits a hard season.
Town and river
Cleanups, park days, and partnerships with schools, the hospital, and civic groups along the Missouri.
The Four-Way Test
Recited at the opening of our meetings.
Translated into more than a hundred languages, used by Rotarians as a moral code for personal and vocational life — not as ornament.
- 1Is it the truth?
- 2Is it fair to all concerned?
- 3Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
- 4Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Areas of focus
Seven causes Rotary takes on worldwide.
Peacebuilding and conflict prevention
Rotary was founded on the idea that people who work together can disagree without turning from one another.
Disease prevention and treatment
From End Polio Now and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to local health partnerships, we back the work that keeps families well.
Water, sanitation, and hygiene
Clean water is still unfinished work — in partner communities abroad and in pockets of need at home.
Maternal and child health
Healthy mothers and children are the measure of a decent community. We fund what helps them thrive.
Basic education and literacy
Dictionaries on third-grade desks, scholarships for Lafayette County seniors, and tutoring when asked.
Community economic development
A river town stays alive when its people have work, mentors, and a reason to stay.
Environment
The Missouri River is our front yard. We treat it — and the land around it — as a trust.