Chapter 5: The Club's CED Structure¶

The minimum structure: five people, five portfolios¶

You have run companies, firms, associations. You know that a project structure has nothing to do with a Rotary club's usual organization chart. A well-run CED project is a small program: a budget of USD 30,000 to 400,000, a duration of twelve to thirty-six months, three to five partners, about ten indicators to track. It is not the "service projects" column of the club newsletter. It is serious management, carried out by seriously defined roles.

A Rotary club's CED structure rests on at least five people, each with a clear portfolio:

CLUB PRESIDENT
│   Commitment decision / Co-signs budgets / District liaison
│
├── CED COORDINATOR
│   │   Project management / Partnerships / RAGCED/TRF reporting
│   │
│   └── CED COMMITTEE (3 members)
│       ├── Finance & stewardship portfolio
│       ├── Field & partners portfolio
│       └── Communication & training portfolio
│
└── RESOURCE MEMBERS
    (called on according to the intervention family: bankers,
     accountants, lawyers, agronomists, trainers,
     entrepreneurs)

Five people, not fifteen. The rest of the club is a pool of skills. A CED project that tries to have everyone decide ends up deciding nothing, and a CED project that decides nothing misses its TRF deadlines.

Role descriptions¶

Club president¶

The club president is not the project's operational manager. The president is the institutional signatory and the link with the district. The president's signature legally commits the club on the Global Grant application, on the partnership Memorandum of Understanding, and on the final stewardship report.

Responsibility	Scope
Approve the club's commitment to a CED project	Board decision, recorded in the minutes
Co-sign the Global Grant application	With the club's Foundation Chair
Sign the partnership MOUs	With the international partner and local partners
Represent the club at district meetings on grants	At least one a year with the DRFC
Approve requests to change the budget or timeline	With TRF staff and the international partner
Present the project's annual report to members	At a regular club dinner meeting, at least once a year

What the president does not do: - Lead the technical dialogue with TRF staff (that is the CED coordinator's role) - Manage the project's cash or sign payment orders alone (two signatures required) - Answer the international partner's methodological questions (same) - Rewrite interim reports single-handedly the day before submission

The president decides, authorizes, represents. The president does not run the project. This discipline is essential: a president who takes the operational controls creates a bottleneck and loses the perspective the project needs.

The club's CED coordinator¶

This is the most demanding position in the system. The CED coordinator is the permanent engine of the project cycle, the conductor of the partners, the technical point person for RAGCED, the TRF Cadre and the DRFC.

The mandate follows seven stages, the seven stages of the doctrine (Chapter 0). For each, an operational expectation.

Stage	Coordinator's responsibility
1. Understand	Follow TRF's CED policy, attend RAGCED monthly meetings, keep watch on changes to the funding model
2. Diagnose	Lead the club's annual area diagnosis (Chapter 3) and the Community Needs Assessment for each project (Chapter 9)
3. Design	Draft the concept note, build the theory of change, choose the intervention family, negotiate the international partnership
4. Fund	Coordinate with the club's Foundation Chair, the district's DRFC, TRF staff, Packaged Grant partners (Oikocredit), funders outside Rotary
5. Implement	Lead the CED committee, keep the dashboard, handle the unexpected, document decisions
6. Document	Manage stewardship: progress report, 12-month reports, final report, five-year archiving
7. Sustain	Prepare the exit strategy from the design stage, lead the ex post evaluation, decide on replication

Ideal profile. A club member who combines three qualities that rarely come together:

Sustained availability: this position takes five to ten hours a week during design, two to five hours during implementation. It is not a role for the busiest member of the club. An active retiree, a manager with flexible hours, a business owner who can quickly delegate to a deputy, a professional who controls their own schedule.
Relevant technical skills: a background in economics, finance, law or social work. Banker, accountant, entrepreneur, business lawyer, former NGO manager, consultant. Not strictly required, but it speeds up the learning curve for TRF procedures and CED vocabulary.
A long term: two to three years minimum. A Global Grant cycle (from design to closeout) runs three to four years. A coordinator who rotates every year leaves a successor to take over a file they do not understand.

The coordinator receives a letter of appointment from the board of directors, specifying scope, term and resources (operating budget, access to the GMS, RAGCED membership).

CED committee: three members, three portfolios¶

Each CED committee member covers a distinct area. In normal times, their workload is light: two to five hours a month. During the active phase of a project, they switch to serious operational mode, meeting every two weeks or even weekly.

Finance & stewardship portfolio

Area	Responsibilities
Budget	Building the application budget, line-by-line tracking, variance control
Disbursements	Two bank signatures, receipt filing, monthly reconciliation
Co-financing	Tracking the DDF match, cash, in-kind, consolidation
Financial reports	Preliminary report, 12-month reports, final report
Stewardship	File archived five years, TRF compliance, answers to any audits

Natural profile. Accountant, chief financial officer, banker, association treasurer, auditor. This portfolio cannot be delegated: it underpins the project's entire credibility with TRF.

Field & partners portfolio

Area	Responsibilities
Local partners	MFI, cooperative, chamber of commerce, field NGO, trainers: mapping, MOUs, follow-up
International partner	Operational link with the partner club, communication schedule, sticking points
Field visits	At least two a year, mission reports, photographs, meetings with beneficiaries
Beneficiary relations	Complaint mechanisms, consultation, feedback sessions
Multi-stakeholder coordination	Calendar, meeting minutes, operational decisions

Natural profile. An entrepreneur comfortable with negotiation, a former project manager, a consultant, a humanitarian professional if the club has one, an agronomist for agricultural projects.

Communication & training portfolio

Area	Responsibilities
Internal communication	Club newsletter, twice-yearly updates, annual CED dinner
External communication	Rotary Showcase, social media, local press, club website, donor reports
Beneficiary protection	Photo consent, dignity, anonymized financial data (see Chapter 4)
Club training	Organizing the two annual training sessions (see Chapter 0, section Using the book as a training base)
Onboarding new members	Presenting the project and the CED system to each new member

Natural profile. Journalist, communications professional, teacher, marketing director, former NGO manager, advocacy officer.

Resource members: the pool of skills¶

The five-person CED structure does not replace the specific technical skills a given project requires. For each intervention family, one or more resource members are called on, without joining the committee permanently.

Intervention family	Resource skills to call on
Microfinance & financial inclusion	Banker (credit analysis), accountant (MFI audit), lawyer (loan contracts), actuary (inclusive insurance)
Vocational training & job placement	HR director, accredited trainer, technical teacher, job placement consultant, entrepreneur who has hired certified graduates
Value chains	Agronomist, food engineer, logistics specialist, retail chain buyer, export expert
Cooperatives & collective entrepreneurship	Lawyer (OHADA AUSCOOP for French-speaking Africa, cooperative law for Europe), former cooperative manager, governance expert
Integrated local development	Architect, civil engineer, ICT specialist, local economist, urban planner

A resource member commits per project, for an explicit period. A resource member is not on the CED committee, but attends the relevant meetings. Their contribution in hours is counted as in-kind co-financing (see Chapter 16), a real lever for the cash match of the Global Grant.

Mapping the club's professional skills¶

A general Rotary club of thirty to fifty members concentrates professional capital whose market value often exceeds USD 500,000 a year in consulting. Mapping that capital makes visible, and usable, what the club holds in potential.

Every year, at the start of the Rotary year, the CED coordinator updates a matrix of available skills. For each member, seven questions:

Main profession, sector, years of experience?
Transferable CED skills (finance, management, legal, agricultural technology, training, communication, etc.)?
Languages spoken and level of fluency?
International experience? Countries worked in?
Professional networks that can be activated (banks, chambers of commerce, MFIs, suppliers, universities)?
Monthly availability for a CED project (hours)?
Restrictions (cannot travel, sectors to avoid because of a conflict of interest)?

The consolidated matrix is a strategic tool for the club, not an HR exercise. It helps size possible projects, respond to RAGCED requests (when a club is looking for an international partner with a specific skill), and value the in-kind contribution to ongoing Global Grants.

Practical rule. Do not map the whole club at once. Start with ten volunteer members. Share the first results at the next dinner meeting. Momentum does the rest within six months.

Succession plan: anticipating turnover¶

Rotary is structurally exposed to the annual turnover of presidents. For a CED project that lasts three years, that means three successive presidents. Without a succession plan, the project runs out of steam at the second change.

CED chain of succession¶

Order	Role	Authority if the previous one is absent
1	Club president	Full authority
2	Immediate past president	Takes over as signatory for the ongoing CED project during the transition
3	President-elect	Brought into all CED committees upon election, with dedicated training
4	Club Foundation Chair	Ongoing TRF contact, independent of presidential turnover
5	CED coordinator	Institutional guardian of the project: does not change every year

Succession rules¶

A long term for the CED coordinator: two to three years minimum, voted by the board of directors, confirmed at the start of each Rotary year. The coordinator's continuity offsets the turnover of presidents.
A stable Foundation Chair: same logic. The Foundation Chair is the permanent interface with TRF. The term extends beyond the annual presidential term.
A structured handover briefing: at each change of president, a formal one-hour briefing between the outgoing president, the incoming president, the CED coordinator and the Foundation Chair. A written briefing document, filed and signed.
Dual approval of long-term commitments: any contractual commitment of the club lasting more than eighteen months requires the signature of the sitting president and of the president-elect. This prevents a commitment made at the end of a term from being challenged by the successor.

Succession sheet to fill out and distribute¶

Every member of the chain keeps a laminated copy:

CED CHAIN OF SUCCESSION
Rotary Club of ___________________

Sitting president: ______________________ Phone: __________
Immediate past president: _______________ Phone: __________
President-elect: ________________________ Phone: __________
Foundation Chair: _______________________ Phone: __________
CED coordinator: ________________________ Phone: __________

Finance & stewardship portfolio: ______________________
Field & partners portfolio: ______________________
Communication & training portfolio: ______________________

District contacts:
DG: _______________________ Phone: __________
DRFC: _____________________ Phone: __________
District CED Chair (if any): _______________________

TRF and RAGCED contacts:
Regional Grants Officer: ___________________ Email: __________
Regional RAGCED contact: ___________________ Email: __________

Ongoing CED projects (Global Grant numbers):
1. _______________________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________________

Updated: ___/___/______

Involving Rotaract and Interact: structured, not decorative¶

Rotaract (ages 18-30) and Interact (ages 12-18) bring skills that are useful to CED, but their involvement must be precisely structured: no financial authority, no signing of institutional commitments, but recognized operational participation.

What Rotaract brings to CED¶

Asset	Practical application
Digital natives	Digitizing beneficiary registers, M&E tracking sheets, collaborative tools with the international partner, technical monitoring
Availability	Field visits, baseline/midline surveys, help with data collection
Academic skills	Students in economics, management, international development, agriculture, statistics: support for evaluation
Multilingualism	Eases the relationship with the international partner, working translations
Young entrepreneur network	Links with local incubation ecosystems when the CED project targets young entrepreneurs

What Interact brings¶

Asset	Application
Fundraising	Targeted school campaigns for the club's cash co-financing
Youth communication	Amplification on suitable social networks (Instagram, TikTok)
Awareness	Educational activities on the SDGs and Rotary's areas of focus

CED involvement rules¶

No financial authority. Rotaractors and Interactors sign no payment order, no MOU, no contract. They are not co-signatories of Global Grants.
An explicit mandate per project. At most one or two Rotaractors on any given CED project, with a letter of assignment specifying the tasks, the duration and the reporting line (the club's CED coordinator).
Minors kept out of risk zones. Interactors are never deployed in the field in uncertain security contexts, and they handle neither cash nor beneficiaries' personal data.
Credit in reports. The Rotaract/Interact contribution is recognized in TRF stewardship reports as in-kind and in communications, strengthening the project's intergenerational dimension.

Setup checklist: the first CED season¶

The structure is in place. It produces nothing by itself: it makes what follows possible. It still has to be fed: by the coordinator's ongoing preparation (Chapter 6), by taking stock of the club's assets (Chapter 7), by activating networks before any project (Chapter 8), and by the discipline of the Community Needs Assessment, on which the eligibility of every TRF application depends (Chapter 9). Together, these four building blocks turn a structure on paper into real operational capacity.