Dear Dedicated Members for Change,
Have you ever looked at your Lodge's Member Register? (Make sure that if you do so, you wear cotton gloves as your Member Register may be a very old document.) From an historical perspective, it's a very interesting document. From a membership perspective, the Member register may be very revealing.
Because I am a membership statistic geek, I recently took a detailed look at the Member Register of my own Lodge - Davis Lodge #169 in Davis, California. My Lodge was instituted and chartered in 1870. Every member who has been initiated into the Davis Lodge has signed his/her name in this register. In the year 2000, I saw that a total of 373 people had been initiated from 1870 to 2000. Put another way, over the first 130 years of my Lodge's existence, 373 individuals had joined by initiation. That translates into an increase of slightly less than 3 members per year over that first 130 years of the existence of the Davis Lodge. I then checked the number of members who had been initiated into my Lodge between 2000 and 2025, and the register showed we added 629 new members during that 25-year period. That translates into an average increase of slightly more than 25 members per year over just the last quarter-century. Remarkably, we added far more new members over the last 25 years than we had added in our first 130 years.
I drilled down further and, just out of curiosity, examined the number of members my Lodge had added at various 10-year increments over the previous century. The growth over that 20th century was remarkably slow. For example, in the decade of the 1940's, 38 new members were initiated into my Lodge. This works out to an average of 3.8 new members joining my Lodge per year during that World War II decade. It was similar in the decade of the 1950's, when 39 new members were initiated during that 10-year span - resulting in an average of 3.9 new members per year in that time frame. New memberships slowed dramatically over the next decades. In the 1960's, only 19 new members were initiated into my Lodge. That translates to an average of 1.9 new members per year during that decade. In the decade of the 1970's, we saw 9 new members join our Lodge - so the Lodge averaged only .9 new members per year. In the decade of the 1980's, just 8 new members were initiated - that's .8 new members on average per year. In the decade of the 1990's the Lodge added 22 new members - or an average of 2.2 new members per year. It should be noted that these numbers only reflect the new members that were added during those respective decades - the numbers do not reflect the number of existing members who ended their memberships because they resigned, moved away, or passed away. Because the numbers of new members were so low, it is likely that the Lodge suffered net losses during many, if not most of these years. (Net losses occur when a Lodge loses more members than it gains during a year.)
So in summary, my Lodge added 373 new members in the first 130 years of its existence, but then added 629 new members over these last 25 years. The difference between adding 1 or 2 or 3 new members per year, and then adding 25 new members per year is astonishing - particularly in light of the reality that the great majority of Odd Fellows Lodges (and fraternal orders in general) consistently show a declining membership.
How did my Lodge accomplish this amazing turnaround in the 21st century? Stay tuned. Next week's DMC Newsletter will address that very question.
F - L - T
Dave Rosenberg
Past Grand Master
Jurisdiction of California
