What the Odd Fellows and the DMC are all about

Updated: March 1, 2021

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of Dedicated Members for Change (DMC) we are having some fun by re-publishing articles from the DMC Newsletters of the past 10 years. Her is an article that was first published on April 10, 2013, on the what we are all about.

​Dedicated Members for Change (DMC) was the brainchild of three Odd Fellows – Don Smith, Rick Boyles and Dave Rosenberg – and was officially “launched” on December 13, 2010.

Since that time, DMC’s e-mail matrix has grown exponentially with DMC members(Odd Fellows) throughout California and North America.

DMC was created as a vehicle to discuss the single greatest problem facing the Order today: Continued decline in membership. More importantly, it was further created to allow DMC members to openly communicate and exchange ideas and best practices to reverse the tide of declining membership and actually grow this Order.

DMC recognized early on that the status quo meant slow disintegration of this Order, and that change was needed to make this great and ancient fraternity relevant to the new 21st Century members that we need to attract. And in newsletter after newsletter, DMC has proposed practical suggestions to increase membership and grow Lodges. These suggestions have been implemented in Lodges, and have been shown to work.

Now, some in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) may still believe that DMC is some sort of radical, fringe, or even subversive organization with all this talk about “evolution” and “change”. Nothing could be further from the truth, Brothers and Sisters. In fact, DMC is completely “mainstream” now. One need only look at the latest edition (March-April 2013) of “I.O.O.F. News”, published by the Sovereign Grand Lodge, to see how mainstream we have become.

Laura Argue, President of the International Association of Rebekah Assemblies has written the following in her column: “I have been attempting to attach some significant meaning to the letters of the word CHANGE, for we all must be open to accept change within our Order to be progressive and to be here as an organization in the future . . . . ” How much more mainstream can you get than the President of the IARA. President Argue recognizes that this Order much change to survive into the future.

And we are not talking about radical change that diminishes the precepts, admonitions and concepts that are as important today as they were in the 1700’s. We are talking about ways to open our Lodges to society and to make our Lodges more relevant to the current generation. These young people will join our Lodges if we are active in the community and do good community works. These young people will also join our Lodges if we provide good fellowship activities that they enjoy and provide the social connection that they desire.

Odd Fellow Lodges that shut themselves off from the world and meet in secret, where all members are in their 70’s and 80’s, are simply doomed to fail. They will not and cannot attract the new vital blood that they need to survive.

F – L – T

Dave Rosenberg