We’ve all had the experience of people coming to join the lodge only to leave after the Initiation and never come back. I have collected some suggestions from various sources to help keep those members engaged so they will continue to attend lodge meetings and events and become valued, regular members.
Member retention happens at three stages: before joining, during joining, and after joining. Before someone joins a lodge it’s important to lay out the expectations for joining during the Interview. A good Interviewing Committee will ask questions about the candidate’s intentions to join and participate. We have all had people show up out of curiosity and decide to join not knowing what to expect. The Interviewing Committee should ask the candidate how often they plan to attend and if they are able to commit to attending on at least a semi-regular basis. Nobody can make every lodge meeting but if they can make half or more meetings that would be a reasonable expectation. Candidates should know that joining a lodge is a serious commitment
where they are making a pledge to the lodge to become a part of everything they do.
In a number of lodges, a member of the Interviewing Committee for a candidate will be tasked with introducing the candidate to other members of the lodge at subsequent meetings after joining. Having such a “buddy program” for new lodge members helps them to form the social bonds that will make them feel attached to the lodge and inspire them to keep coming back. In fact, it is often the social bonds that will keep members engaged in the lodge. Few people participate solely because the enjoy parliamentary procedure and voting to pay bills. Members are much more likely to come back if they feel a social connection to current members of the lodge. Having an existing member assigned to show the new member around and make introductions helps to jumpstart the process of forming those connections.
A candidate’s first impression of how seriously they should take their membership in the lodge is formed by how the lodge approaches the ceremony of joining. If the lodge does a well-performed, meaningful initiation, the candidate will be impressed with how important the lodge takes its ritualistic work and come away with the sense that joining a lodge is a serious commitment. If the candidate sees the members working hard, making an effort, and taking the Degree Work seriously, they will rightly infer that the lodge is a special and important place and they should feel fortunate to be accepted and expect to put in a similar effort. Shoddy, careless Degree work tells the candidate that the members of the lodge don’t care all that much about what they’re doing and so the candidate doesn’t need to take it seriously either. When they join, candidates should feel that the Initiatory Degree (or Rebekah Degree) is a gift given to them by the lodge to welcome them in as they join, not an afterthought to be forgotten.
Giving new members materials about the lodge at the time they join is an excellent way to show them the level of commitment the lodge has to them and that they should have to the lodge. Some things to give new members at the time of joining include their own charge book, a copy of the by-laws of the lodge, and a quick-start guide to participating in the lodge explaining basic items of parliamentary procedure and letting them know which items of business they can participate in (Sickness And Distress, New Business, Good Of The Order). Some lodges have bought copies of the Odd Fellows’ Primer to hand out to new members to familiarize them with Odd Fellowship overall. Others prepare a calendar of lodge events and/or a lodge directory with contact information for members of the lodge.
After members have already joined the lodge there are still opportunities to keep them engaged and bring them back if they have not been attending. Member communication was always an important part of lodge life. Prior to the Internet, many lodges had newsletters mailed out to members to help keep them informed of regular happenings in the lodge. Those are still an option, but most lodges now opt for electronic communications. One such option is an email list that goes out to members on a regular basis, either as a general update or as a reminder to attend lodge. Email lists can be manual or automated. I prefer using an automated email list and one can be set up for free with fewer than one hundred recipients on Groups.io. Another option for doing group reminders is to set up a group calendar with automated reminders (Google is a popular choice for that).
A slightly more advanced option is a Facebook page and/or group for the lodge with regular posts and scheduled reminders on the group calendar. The Facebook option has the added benefit of serving as a presence for the lodge on social media which can help to attract new members. The lodge can share information about social events and other activities with members and with others in the community. A further more advanced way of communicating with members is to create a dedicated chat server. The most common one used in Odd Fellowship is Discord. There is a Discord server for all Odd Fellows (Heart In Hand Online) and also several Discord servers for individual lodges. All of the options allow for communication with members who don’t always show up at meetings and can be an effective way of keeping them in the loop and letting them know they are missed at meetings.
Sometimes an old-fashioned approach works well for member retention. If a member hasn’t come to a meeting for a couple months, it can be helpful to have the Secretary drop a card in the mail to that member to let them know they are missed and appreciated and remind them of the next lodge meeting. Making contact with a card shows the member that the lodge values their membership for more than just the dues they pay. It’s also a nice gesture in this era when personal communications are generally done on the Internet. Sending birthday cards to members is also a gesture that can keep members engaged and get them to come back to the lodge.
Special events can be an excellent way of getting members re-engaged with the lodge who have not been attending regularly. Lodges can do game nights, movie nights, sports viewing parties, wine tastings, painting parties, cigar nights, bingo games, cribbage nights, and anything else that has the potential to bring members together outside of business meetings. It’s easy to get someone interested in participating more if they come to a social event and hear about some of the exciting projects a lodge has planned. Another good tool of engagement is a Degree Day. Doing the Degrees can be a lot of fun, especially when it doesn’t involve doing regular lodge business. Degree Days are a chance for members to show up and contribute in a way other than just sitting through a meeting and voting to pay the bills. Events that specifically reward members for their membership like homecoming dinners or roll-call dinners can be very successful for rounding up members who haven’t participated much.
While we all want new candidates coming into our lodges enriching us with their new ideas and energy, sometimes we need to step back and look at the resource we already have: dormant members who have joined but not been active. Those members can be an excellent source of participation in the lodge and build connections that will last a very long time.
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An excellent article.
Peter
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