Virtual 1 - Shriners Lead the Way: What’s Our Story?

[title card] Shriners International Education Foundation presents: Shriners Lead the Way: A Masonic Centered Approach to Membership and Marketing: What's Our Story?

[title card] Noble Academy logo; Dave Kelm | High Priest & Prophet, Membership Chairman | Asan Shriners; Shriners International Education Network logo

We don't know what it's going to take for you or your temple or your lodge to get moving to start your membership journey or renew your membership journey. Our course objectives are pretty simple. We only want you to take one thing away. What is that thing? What is going to light your fuse? What are you going to come away with from today's presentation that gets your temple moving? What is that one thing? I've got to figure this whole thing out with the clicker. I apologize, everybody. So here we go. What is our story? Who do we say we are? We say that we're one brotherhood. We say that the third degree is the pen. Ultimate. We meet on the level and we part on the square. But you know what? This is where we really reside, isn't it? We are a group of human beings who are sometimes bogged down by petty jealousies.

We frown upon Appendant bodies. We've all heard the whole story about he only wants to become a mason because he wants to become a Shriner, or he is going to join a lodge because his friends are in Scottish Rite. We've even heard in central Illinois of some lodges blackballing potential members because they feared he would join an appendant body. What they really feared though is they couldn't or wouldn't give that potential brother what he was looking for from Masonry. But masonry has something for everyone, doesn't it? Look at all these different, confusing paths of membership. We are one big Masonic family, and we tend to be one big dysfunctional family. You can't chart a path on this map without a professional cryptographer. For us to explain how to become a potential member is difficult. It's challenging. It can be chaos. The potential member, we are a membership organization, and to a potential member, it is really difficult to figure out how to become a Mason.

[A large, elaborate flow chart labeled "Masonic Family Map" that has dozens of offshoots and labels that are illegible on the screen.]

So we have erected some barriers. We've self-erected these barriers here that we've found, and we also have external challenges that we have to overcome, to steal a clichéd corporate phrase, we have allowed ourselves to become stovepiped. It may not be correct for us to talk about our current state of affairs, but we are famous for pretending as masons that other bodies don't even exist. Most of us belong to many different independent bodies. But it would be, gosh, we believe if we talk in lodge about shrine or if, as a York Wright lying officer, we would dare ever discuss degree practice for Scottish Rite. We have lodges that want to raise new masons, but only if they purely will stay at a lodge. We also have long memories. We also have members who remember some personal slight that took place, excuse me, in the distant past, but that still guides our decisions today, even if it is injurious to growing membership, that we have all been at an event where someone brings up why we don't do this or why we don't do that, and that will trigger a story whose passion is fueled by scotch, but whose facts are often shaded by time.

We are also the great victims of the phrase. We've always done it that way. We don't want to make it easier to pay dues. We don't want to make it easier to sign up for an event or volunteer as a first-year member because we've always done it that way. And of course, probably the death nail of membership growth. Enshrine is somebody came up with to be one ask one. This single phrase, in my opinion, is the single largest reason why we have had a reduction in membership and membership efforts other than death. As an organization, we have told ourselves, we have given ourselves permission to wait for non-members to knock on the lodge door. They've got to come to us. We can't talk to them or offer them information or ask them to become members because to be one, you have to ask one.

So we sat back and we waited and we waited and we waited. And in that interim, what has the public come to think of us? We're a secret society. We have these secret blogs and these secret temples. Well, being secret means not being very inclusive. We just discussed the previous slide. That path to membership is arduous. We also know that our mission and values are very clear to us, but to broadcast those and communicate those well to a potential mason is difficult. Clearly, the commitment to become a master mason shouldn't be taken lightly, but those of us trying to move that message forward and grow the fraternity, it's difficult. Recently, the Northern Masonic jurisdiction did a survey of non-members. The respondents knew a lot about Freemasonry, that it was an organization that where there are parades that they're male-oriented, but they didn't know those core values or what it stood for.

When those same respondents were informed about the core values of Masonry, more than 70% of those respondents indicated that they may be interested in becoming a Mason. We can't do anything about the age of our current members, but it's important to recognize that that has an impact on potential members. And while we have heard in our outreach at Ansar, and we know as Shriners that parade units and hospital commercials and the iconic fez identify us as Shriners, many non-members don't know that you had to become a Mason first to become a Shriner. So in our little corner of central Illinois, we talked about how to get Shriners activated in membership development and how, as Shriners, we can move that forward.