Some Ideas for Growing a Lodge

By Stanley J. Bransgrove, PM

(An Open Letter written in January 2001 that was originally published on Fraternal World)

I am a 36-year old father of two (13 months and 33 months), a Freemason for ten years, and served my Lodge as Master in 2000. From about 1997 I began looking outside the Masonic fraternity for ideas that might work in rejuvenating my own lodge, which had and has a core of active members but which had had few candidates. I deliberately sought such outside input as an antidote what I think is the problem of group-think, too often manifested in the expression, "we can't do that because we've never done it that way before."

One thing I learned was that the decline in fraternal interest is an across the board phenomenon - it has hit Freemasonry, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Druids, etc.; The devastating effects of the decline has affected the organizations in proportion to their relative size - Orders that were smaller have felt it worse, with some boarding on extinction in the state. From my experiences in our community I have concluded that a sense of complacency and inertia that developed in the aftermath of WWII (for example in 1947 we gained 47 new members - a typical gain for Masonic Lodges in the late 1940's) made us turn inward and we lost our connection with our community. Please forgive me again if I go on too long about what led me to this conclusion and what we have done as a lodge to compensate for years of neglect.

Because my lodge is coming up on its centennial in 2003, I began researching our public history at local libraries and historical society history rooms (most of which are maintained within the libraries). I was amazed to find out that very little fraternal history had been preserved. My town had in addition to my Masonic Lodge, a Odd Fellows lodge and I was surprised to learn at one time a Knights of Pythias Lodge and Red Men's Tribe. Yet, aside from a couple of references in some WPA Federal Writers Project newspaper compilations from the Great Depression there was nothing on the IOOF, K of P or IORM. One of the conclusions I drew from this is that we had all operated too much as "secret societies."

Confirming this, we had about the same time started letting the local volunteer fire department hold its annual Memorial Day fundraising breakfast using our Lodge; in conjunction, we used the opportunity to give public tours of our Lodge room the ceiling of which a Past Master had just covered with a beautiful mural. The comment we kept hearing from the public was that they had never noticed our building (even though it's one of the largest buildings downtown, directly across the street from City Hall).

Soon after we landscaped the small garden outside the building with raised flower beds, gravel, and added a wrought iron fence. While our work party was working on the project, we repeatedly heard comments from people who professed to being life long residents who said they had never seen the building before. We had in the course of almost 100 years become effectively invisible in the community! This, despite the fact that our membership rolls for the first 20-30 years of the Lodge's existence (which closely coincides with the town's own existence as a Chartered California City) was filled with the leading citizens of the town: Our Past Masters were the Mayors, City Councilmen, City Attorneys, leading businessmen, the early voting rolls were largely members of the Lodge - you get the idea. Many of those early builders of the town who weren't Masons were Odd Fellows. (Surprisingly, to date I haven't been able to unearth any evidence of members belonging to both Masonic and Odd Fellows Lodges - I suspect this is because of my lack of access to Odd Fellows records for our now extinct Odd Fellows Lodge.)

Which brings me to another point. The local IOOF Lodge closed without ceremony or notice: The Mill Valley IOOF Lodge which had met only about a block away from our Masonic Lodge had consolidated with San Rafael Odd Fellows Lodge in 1978, but its loss was not realized for over 20-years when the Mill Valley Rebekah Lodge finally sold the building! We still wouldn't know this had happened except I ran into the new owner coming out of the building and began talking to them about the state of the Lodge. Having lived all of my 36-years in town I felt stupid not knowing how long it had been gone until I learned in talking with a three term Mill Valley Mayor who was in office in 1978 that he didn't know the Lodge was gone either. Similarly, none of my Lodge brothers knew it. Again I came back to the conclusion that we (Masons, Odd Fellows, etc.) had made ourselves invisible in the community.

An informal committee of active members, Officers and Past Masters set about trying to rectify that situation. We realized too that because our core active membership was weighted heavily by members who had been keeping the Lodge going for 30-40 years, that we could not put demands on those men that would be too taxing; members' time was a resource we had to conserve. Early on one of our few new members, looking for a way to contribute, put his computer skills to work for us in instituting a web-site for the Lodge (Mill Valley Lodge Web Site). Thanks to his skill as a web-placement specialist, our site is now ranking second in searches on Google for California Freemasonry - we are getting well over 1,000 hits per month from unique viewers (he only counts one hit per day for any one ISP number no matter how many times in 24-hours that user accesses the site and/or pages within the site). This project required only one willing person's time.

We also investigated public access television. We found that it was relatively easy to have your own weekly television series on local cable access that has a potential maximum of 60,000 viewers in the county. One member tracked down the minimum of ten videos our local station required for a ten week series (shorter series are also available), wrote letters the copyright holders asking permission to show them (which all copyright holders gladly granted for free), and has been running the series since 1999. Once the initial ten tapes were started on the air, thirty more tapes were located and are now in our rotation. The total cost for acquiring the tapes and copying them with a slate about the Lodge at the beginning and end, was less than $1,000, which was donated by the brother managing the series for the Lodge. Again, one interested brother making a difference. (See, Film Festival.)

We also set about rectifying a problem with our building telephone. We had had, for as long as anyone could remember, a pay phone in the building that was effectively useless to us. Unless someone happened to be there when the phone rang, we never got a call. We discovered that we could have the phone removed and replaced by a business line with an answering machine (remotely accessible) to receive calls from our phone book listing and also a residential line restricted to local access for everyone to use. The cost of two lines is now half the cost of the useless pay phone. Since our profile in the community is again on the rise, the number of calls we are getting is not really a fair indication of what we might have been missing all those years, but we can attribute one new member (now an important line officer who should be Master in 2006) to being able to receive messages from our phone.

We have been holding public activities (such as lectures by invited speakers) on a fairly regular basis; our most recent speaker was an Imam speaking about Islam. Each of these has been publicized in all of the local papers, which have given us quite a few inches of page space describing the events. They also refer to our web site and telephone for more information. We fax in our event announcements to the Cable station which adds them to their television calendar, and to an internet community calendar that we are able to link to our web site (Marin Community Partner - Mill Valley Lodge No. 356). We post hand-bills at local supermarkets bulletin boards advertising the events. The first few programs we saw no members of the public, but we know that people are seeing announcements in multiple media formats and are becoming aware of the fraternities active existence. We think that such repetition will in the long run help people think about the fraternity of Freemasonry in our community - at least we think that successful businesses must share this belief or they wouldn't allocate so much money to advertising. Unfortunately, we don't have the budget - either in money or human capital- to do more.

One different type of activity we tried was inviting the nearest Knights of Pythias Lodge (Berkeley Lodge No. 162 in Berkeley) to be our guest for dinner and to give a presentation on their Lodges and charities. It was very successful in terms of the brotherhood fostered, the exposure it gave us (and I think them) to different ideas, and since their total membership was about a third of ours, the significant contributions their Lodge was and is making to community charities made many of us think that we could do still more. While their Chancellor Commander and I discussed some type of informal "Sister City/Sister Lodge" plan, we both failed to make the arrangement more concrete. From my research into the history of various Lodge organizations, I found that such inter-fraternal communications may not have been so far and few between in the past: While I have no evidence of it on a local level, the annual proceedings of the California Grand "Lodges" of the KofP, IORM, and UAOD's are replete with references to congratulatory letters received from other "rival" fraternal Grand Lodges on that years sessions and wishing their "rival" fraternity well in the upcoming year. Another example is a wonderful small booklet titled Man, My Brother: The Broader Fraternalism - Fraternal Addresses, written jointly by George M Hanson (KofP), John B. Cockrum (IOOF), and George B. Griggs (IORM) (Fraternal Publishing Co., Houston, TX, 1912). When and why did our "rival" fraternities become as isolated as they seem today?

These things have given us the idea of hosting something akin to a "Fraternal Fair" modeled on the idea of a "Job Fair" which would involve Masonic Lodges, Odd Fellows, Druids, and from outside the county the Knights of Pythias. As yet, this is still in the talk stage, though leaders from the various local lodges of the four organizations have expressed interest. During this period we have been working hard on our monthly bulletin to members. It has been expanded from a monthly calendar and Master's Message to now include a three-month calendar, Master's Message, News Briefs, and extended article on either Masonic history or symbolism. This change towards being more timely, informative, and educational has received praise from many brethren we had not seen at Lodge in years.

Another activity that began during my term as Master was a "Pillars of the Community" dinner to honor group deserving recognition. For the last two years we chose the new Eagle Scouts from Marin County Troops. We put on a fairly fancy dinner (prepared by a member who is an award winning Chef) with professional entertainment (we have received a huge discount from a professional stage magician who is also a Mason), and presented each Scout with a framed certificate designed by a member to include Masonic symbols and the Eagle Scout Badge. We have received very positive feed back from the Scouts, their families, and the Scout Council. I understand that other Lodges are having similar dinners to honor, i.e., police and/or fire departments. For a rather modest financial outlay of less than $500 (still significant in our budget) and a cost in human capital of one coordinator's work for several months and five brothers helping our Chef for about five hours, we have made a group of about 25-34 dedicated Scouts feel good about their achievement by recognizing their individual projects and introduced them and their families to a fraternity that can serve them in the future.

With the lodge doing more, excitement has built and we have received more applications. For instance, we received ten applications in 2001 - all but one from younger members. While we are prohibited from soliciting for new members, advertising the fact that a man has to ask to join in our publicity efforts has certainly helped us grow. We have also received several applications for affiliation from members of other lodges now living in our area: These Masons had three local Masonic Lodges to choose from, but chose ours - we think in part because of our activities. Another unanticipated affect has been the application of members from out lying communities such as San Francisco and Berkeley who have sought out our Lodge based on the growing reputation of the Lodge and of some members who have been active speaking at various Masonic symposiums and in other esoteric endeavors. One of the new initiates who was raised last year is the former editor of Gnosis Magazine: He is taking over publication of our monthly bulletin and has also become one of our new officers.

With new blood in the Lodge, we are doing more. We have been very active in conjunction with the Police and Fire Departments in providing free Kid's ID's to the parents in the community. (See, Kids ID by Mill Valley Lodge.) Again this was something that three or four members could run (affordable in terms of human capital), but it has given us great recognition in our community both in the press and also face contact at community fairs. We have borrowed the local Shrine club's parade car and for two years have been an entrant in the town's Memorial Day parade - again a half dozen brother's willingness to give up three hours to ride in the Parade gives us a new public image and because it has been largely the younger men riding with their families, our developing image is as a group that attracts young family men. I think that my own daughter really learned how to wave riding on the car.

We even were brave enough in 2000 to attempt an idea that had been kicking around for several years - to host a community haunted house. Our chief fear was still whether we had the human capital to do the project. Concerned about this, we developed a model by which we could borrow human capital by inviting the local Rotary and Lions clubs to each decorate a third of the space. We visited their meetings, pitched the idea, and they signed on. Unfortunately, days before the scheduled event, both tried to drop out citing a lack of human capital. My Junior Warden talked one into staying to run a pumpkin painting contest, and the other into staying to serve refreshments. We came through decorating the entire space. The event was very successful and was repeated this last year with us again doing the hall, and Lions and Rotary filling the auxiliary rolls. With this event we have helped reestablish our local reputation as the can-do organization: We are well regarded with both the service clubs for our having made the best of what could have been a disaster, but to the contrary became a successful annual event for our three organizations. (We also invited a contingent of local Boy Scouts to serve as guides through the Haunted House.) (See, Haunted House.)

Something that we have not, in my opinion, been able to fully correct is a badly antiquated initiation fee and dues structure. Neither had been raised since 1972 (and before that since the 1920's) from $139 application fee and $36/year dues. Per capita tax had surpassed 50% of dues. Adjusted for inflation, conservatively, initiation fees should be close to $500 and dues should be at least $149. Yet, our dues were less than most magazine subscriptions; we have had candidates filling out applications laugh at the fee and pull the $139 out of their wallets on the spot. To put it into perspective, most people in my community pay at least 12 times our annual dues (12 months at $36 = $432) for cable television. If you've paid 12 times your lodge dues for cable TV, it seems more likely that you'll want to stay in and see what you've paid for on TV. This last year, after three years of discussion, we did manage to raise our dues to $50 and application fees to $175, which is still, in my opinion, far too low. (The San Rafael Elks Club pays annual dues of $175/year. Similarly, third degree members of the Ordo Templi Orientis purportedly pay $180/year dues.) However, one of the problems that swayed members from voting for a greater increase was the fact that the two neighboring lodges dues and fees would then be much less and might result in a drain of membership toward those lodges, not in my opinion too likely.

In researching fraternities for an on-line history (Survey of Marin Fraternal History) I found that low cost of membership had long been identified by some as having a deleterious effect on fraternal societies. For instance, in 1924, the acting Great Incohonee of the Improved Order of Red Men, W.A.S. Bird, stated during his official visit to California Great Council session:

I've heard it said from the Golden Gate to the Atlantic, from the north to the south, "Bird, you have a cheap organization." I say to them, "Now, don't measure our organization by the amount of wampum [money] it takes to get into it." But they say, "Now, here, in your City of Topeka, you have a waiting list in five Masonic lodges at a hundred dollars per membership." The Odd Fellows at ten to fifteen, the Knights of Pythias at fifteen, the Improved Order of Red Men at ten, go begging, and lots of our boys who complain about ten fathoms [dollars] to join the Red Men have recently gone into the Masonic fraternity at a hundred, and what is the trouble? May it not be advisable at this time to consider the proposition of making the minimum fee twenty-five instead of ten fathoms. The man that can love a woman for nothing will break his darn neck to love one if it costs him a lot. I tell you, we pay for what is worth while, and you get out of this life and this fraternity just what you put in, and nothing more. (Record...1924, p. 123.) [Nb. Converting 1924 dollars to 2000 dollars - $100 would now be $977.19; $25 would now be $244.30; $15 would now be $146.58; and $10 would now be $97.72.]

In our estimation, even increasing dues to a respectable level when adjusted for inflation, will be insufficient to fund a budget for the types of activities we envision adding to our current program, such as sponsoring a little league team, sponsoring underprivileged children's attendance to summer camp, and upgrading our own meal functions, as well as maintaining an increasingly expensive building. To do so, our Hall Association has developed a new business plan to make maximum use of our biggest asset - the building.

We are now in the planning stages for remodeling our downstairs social hall/refectory to make it a downtown events center. Such space is in demand and can command premium rental prices - if it is up to modern standards. ... While it will be necessary to borrow against the building to pay for the renovations, we believe that we are in the situation now of either taking a calculated risk that will ensure our future for another hundred years, or using our existing assets as a sinking fund that will be exhausted and lead to the Lodge's demise in a couple of decades. Without upgrading our facilities, we do not foresee being able to continue to attract members. The Lodge building has to be an attractive place, not a fading glory that will lead to embarrassment.

The California Masonic Code (our constitution) permits lodges to join Local Chambers of Commerce. In 2000 we took advantage of this and joined ours. We are now listed in the Mill Valley Chamber's member's directory (which all local business members have) and on their web-site (which links to our own - Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce). This is another avenue to expose community leaders to the fact of our existence. When remodeling is complete (hopefully by our October 2003 centennial), we plan to kick-off the Masonic Event Center with a Chamber of Commerce mixer to draw the businessmen in and show off the facilities.

In sum, after five years of fairly hard work to raise our profile in the community and to run tightly focused business meetings that allow more time for informative speakers and/or socializing and less for reading minutes and paying bills (as if each of us doesn't have enough of those to pay at home), we are seeing a turn around in new applications and general attendance at Lodge: With the influx of new members practicing degree work now has a purpose and urgency that was lacking, which further cements our friendships. Our state of activity echoes a favorite quotation of mine that I found in the book Fourteen Decades of Brotherhood by Michael W. Carr (a recent book about the history of the Knights of Pythias) wherein he states:

Still, that 'lack of purpose' rears its ugly head. Earlier in this volume, you have read where the Grand Chancellor of one of the western Domains had met a large number of men who dropped out of the Order because the local lodges never did anything fun. Most of these men said they would rejoin in a flash if the local lodges offered some type of activities. This is not to say that lodges don't offer activities. The successful ones do, and are quite adept at providing good programs that keep their membership interested. (Carr at 193.)

Throughout all the changes that have been implemented, we have maintained our one true strength - a genuine sense of brotherhood and love among the active memberships. We care about each other, support each other in and out of the Lodge, and trust in each other's motives. The older stalwarts of the Lodge have thrown their full support behind new ideas, and continue to teach us that fraternalism is really about opening our hearts to others and effectively accepting them as extended family: Hence it's normal for us to regularly visit each other in good times and bad, throw what are in effect "Lodge" parties since those are the guests at our homes, spend holidays together, help with yard work, vacation together, etc. As one of the younger members of the Lodge I look forward to aging with my Lodge brothers as my mentors have done for over 40+ years.

I hope that some of these ideas will prove helpful. I believe that in the main, they are transferable to any Lodge, Masonic or otherwise. I hope that fraternalists of every tradition will turn around the current state of decline. I also wish that in my own city that we were not the only game in town: I'd much rather be in friendly competition (and active communication) with two or three other types of Lodges, since I think that such competition would promote growth. I think that renewed vigor is possible through a judicious management of our resources in an intelligent manner, and realizing that results may not be immediately apparent or even traceable to any particular effort by the Lodge. Finally, I am quite certain that we have to raise our public image and adapt modern communications to our needs if we are going to be successful. I remain,

Fraternally yours,
Stanley J. Bransgrove, PM
Mill Valley Lodge No. 356, F & AM of California
sjbransgrove@acninc.net

Epilogue

In the two years since this was written, the Film Festival on Freemasonry has continued to air on Cable Access, and has passed the 100 episode mark.

The Lodge hosted a successful Fraternal Exposition, the original idea of which was expanded to include a Symposium of Fraternal Speakers. (See, Fraternal Exposition Recap.)

Bro. Jay Kinney (Gnosis Magazine) continues to publish the Lodge's Trestleboard and continues to improve the bulletin with each new addition. Further, with Bro. Kinney's guidance, the Lodge will be publishing a Centennial History of Mill Valley Lodge No. 356 by the end of 2004.

As a result of Mill Valley Lodge's leadership with respect to the Kids ID program, our neighboring Lodge (Marin Lodge No. 191, F & AM) has purchased a complete computer system so that the 134th Masonic District (Marin Lodge No. 191, Mill Valley Lodge No. 356, and Fairfax Lodge No. 556) will have its own hardware and software with which to expand our service to the community.

The Haunted House has continued to grow in popularity with children and has been a wonderful project to do with our friends in Rotary, and Boy Scouts. Unfortunately, the Mill Valley Lions club surrendered its charter early in 2003 ending many years of the Lions contributions to the community: We enjoyed working with them for the first three years of the Haunted House and appreciated all the contributions they made to the event.

The Lodge is working to create a Masonic Angels Foundation. Mill Valley Lodge's proposal in this regard is currently working its way through Grand Lodge.

Centennial Renovations to the Masonic Hall, including extensive remodeling of the banquet room, was completed in advance of the Centennial Celebration. The Mill Valley Masonic Events Center Mill Valley Masonic Events Center has become a premier location for all types of events and is recognized as a valuable "new" asset by the community.

The remodeling has not only brought more members of the Lodge closer together, but immediately has had the effect of attracting men to the Lodge who have inquired about membership. Hence the Lodge is looking forward to many opportunities to perform degree work in the months and years ahead. These new members can look forward to not only receiving the benefit of well performed Masonic Degrees, but also a close association with brothers who are proud to be part of a Lodge that is progressive in its traditional approach to Freemasonry.