Reprinted from the Florida Elks News, winter 2014 edition
One doesn’t have to look far these days to find an Elks Lodge having problems. In fact, it would be easier to count those without problems than those with problems! Today we see Lodges that have had a reputable history of growth and achievement and which were once thought to be invincible that are now close to becoming defunct or have already become defunct. The past several years have provided me with the opportunity for a unique insight on our Lodges and their problems. We continue to work diligently to help guide our association in the right direction to provide support where needed. Ideas, thoughts, and perspectives on these issues have been openly shared in my articles. As a group, we continue to develop new and innovative approaches to solving our problems. Throughout it all, the emphasis has been to remain optimistic about things as opposed to dwelling on the negatives. However, restraint has its limits, and sometimes a little tough love is needed in order for us to take a realistic look at ourselves and some of the destructive things we do in this organization, an organization we all claim to care so much about!
I believe that many of our declining Lodges are suffering at present from a lack of leadership and vision. I am not sure what it is about the generation of people who are presently running Lodges but there just seems to be a reluctance or a complacency to try new things or make changes that alter our routines and traditions. Every year at our training for our Exalted Rulers and Secretaries, we ask how many have taken their jobs in the Lodge because they think they are doing their Lodge a favor by serving. Invariably hands rise and others look at them as if to question what good they think they will be. Does this not immediately create an atmosphere of entitlement for these people? Whatever happened to volunteerism for the greater good and not for what’s in it for me?
Another question that is asked of Exalted Rulers Elect is how many see their most important job as the running of the bar and restaurant, vowing that this year they are going to make a profit. Again, many hands rise and when challenged further to take a hard look at the financials and tell us how they are going to create something out of nothing, the response is a blank stare. Perhaps they just feel it is going to happen or they feel that it simply can’t get any worse! For years now I have been saying we have got to get out of this rut where we let the bar and restaurant consume our every thought, idea, volunteer, and member. We have got to quit selling the bar and restaurant to new members as it just isn’t any longer a sustainable base upon which to grow a Lodge. We must begin to look more at other volunteer opportunities, true volunteer opportunities, where someone can give to a cause other than trying to prop up a money-losing bar and restaurant operation.
Another particularly destructive habit we have gotten into revolves around our Lodge meetings and the lack of member attendance at them. As a result, opportunistic members have leveraged this occurrence to their advantage. Here’s the scenario: Today we are lucky if we have more than 25 members attend a Lodge meeting. Try as we might, we shorten the rituals, we remove the need to memorize them, we allow casual dress, and we hold them less frequently all while thinking that we are going to drive people back to our meetings! When are we going to admit that times have changed and attending meetings is just not what people do anymore? We have become comfortable in allowing a few people, the few who are willing to work hard, to make all the decisions and run the Lodge.
Remember that entitlement situation I mentioned earlier? Have we not once again endorsed this concept within the few who do all the work? I am not saying it’s all wrong but is it managed in your Lodge? Are the free food, drinks, and other courtesies enjoyed by these “volunteers” accounted for in your financial planning and pricing or is this eating up what little profit there was to begin with? Perhaps it is time to reorganize so that one day the Lodges may be managed by a board of directors and meetings will become board meetings open to the members. Perhaps then our members will feel a little more involved and will consider attending a meeting or watching it live on the internet or reading the minutes of the board meeting that have been e-mailed to them. Honestly, I believe this to be the direction we need to move in, but moving mountains is not done easily!
In the interim and back to the destructive practice I want to talk about, the one resulting from our few meeting attendees and the cliques that take over the operations, while this is taking place there is another clique watching what they do. They do nothing but complain, they get jealous of the allowances the in-control clique provides for themselves, and then it comes time for officer elections. We see this again and again in Lodges large and small. Because of the light attendance at meetings it doesn’t take much. The sideline faction sits by hoping for the failure of the faction in power. They remain silent and show their best poker faces until election night comes and then they pounce. That first Lodge meeting turns out more people than have attended all meetings in the past year, the idle faction has campaigned their position well, they have promised everyone a change or a return to the old ways of doing things, and a new regime is ushered in until the next regime plays the game all over again the following year. Often the new regime is made up of new energetic members, members with no Elks experience and possibly even no organization experience. I often refer to this group as the ones who ran a heck of a snack bar at the little league field and who are going to bring that same success to our much larger and more sophisticated operations. Their inexperience haunts them from day one, they begin to raise red flags throughout the state because of their actions or inaction, and the next thing you know the District Deputy steps in, removes the offending officers, makes many of the regime’s supporters mad, runs them off to the fraternal club down the street, and then the Lodge stalls waiting for the old regime to return from the other fraternal where they went to hide while the Lodge was being run by the others!
Does this sound familiar? Do you think it can’t happen to your Lodge? Folks, it is happening all throughout our state and probably the country! It can and will happen unless we start to change our ways! In an effort to try and provide leadership to our plight, I will be asking the leadership of our state in February to allow me to assemble a blue-ribbon panel of Elks who have been involved with or are currently involved with trying to turn a Lodge around. What I would like us to develop is a list of the most common warning signs associated with a Lodge that is headed for trouble. Once we identify and prioritize these signs we can develop a self-assessment type tool that any Lodge or member can use to determine just how vulnerable their Lodge is. I believe that if we begin to identify the symptoms before they have a chance to proliferate out of control, we will have a better opportunity to address the problems and prevent the need for a Lodge probation, a special representative or steering committee to run the Lodge, or worse yet the loss of the Lodge all together.
Self-diagnosis and steps to prevention are never easy but they are less invasive, much more private than having our problems aired in public, and much less expensive! We must become more aware of the things that are causing our problems and not wait for them to become problems before we address them. How many more Lodges are going to have to close? How many more members are we going to lose? What’s it going to take to get us to stop our own self-destruction?
I know we care; now let’s show it!
State Secretary