After 98 years of serving their communities, the Niles-Buchanan Rotary Club officially dissolved June 1.

For approximately four years, the club had been struggling to keep its membership, according to Paul Rifenberg, a former board member and past president for the service organization.

“It got to the point where we thought, ‘this is not working out,’” Rifenberg said. “How do you get prospective members when you have such low numbers?”

Since 1962, the club has contributed more than $300,000 in scholarship funds to Niles, Brandywine and Buchanan high school graduates. Aiding local youth has been one of the club’s biggest goals, Rifenberg said.

This year, the club awarded three $1,000 scholarships to students from Brandywine, Buchanan and Niles high schools. There was enough money to support these scholarships, Rifenberg said.

The club also has a continuing Rotary Foundation fund that will still contribute to scholarships for a number of years.

The local club helped to feed the Rotary Organization’s mission at an international level, by helping to provide clean drinking water around the world.

Additionally, the Niles-Buchanan Rotary club supported local families in need during Christmas time. The club would purchase gifts for families, as recommended by the school district.

“There are families that won’t be having that [Christmas gifts] this year,” Rifenberg said. “Hopefully those types of things will come from somewhere else.”

At its most prominent, the club had more than 200 members. The memberships were supported by local manufacturing companies, like Simplicity, that used to pay membership dues. When manufacturers, including Clark Equipment, left the area, they took some members with them.

Dues cost between $50 to $60 a month,  which included the cost of the weekly lunch during Monday meetings.

When Rifenberg joined in in the 1990s, the club’s membership was at about 70 members and for years membership plateaued, until about four years ago, when membership dipped to about 20 people.

When numbers began to dip, the club encouraged members to bring someone new to the meetings, with the hope of obtaining new members. But not enough people joined, or when one joined, another left.

The situation is one that has become common for service clubs across the country, Rifenberg said. He cited one reason for the explanation for the problem as a lack of millennial participation.

“I think millennials are not into that kind of thing. They do not [seem] to join service clubs,” Rifenberg said. “There used to be a time when you joined a service club. That was what you did.”

Additionally, the club used to see more participation from public figures, like the school superintendents and city managers.

“For whatever reason when those caliber of people left, they were not easily replaced,” Rifenberg said.

The club also had an invitation to join memberships with the Berrien Springs Rotary, but this would still mean dissolving the Niles-Buchanan Club.

Rifenberg said he hopes that the remaining members who disbanded from Rotary will lend their services to another service organization that needs it.

Looking back on 98 years, Rifenberg said the club had done its best to better the communities.

“We have taken great pride in serving the community and we hope the individual members will continue to do in some other fashion, even if it is 20 different things,” Rifenberg said. “I think we will figure out a way to provide service in our own way.”