Honorable Past Grand Exalted Rulers Bristol and Affatato; State President Carr; Reverend Martine; members of the Advisory Committee; State Association officers; members of the New York State Elks Association; family and friends…

It is such an honor to be called to represent all of you. Thank you again to our Advisory Committee for placing their confidence in me. I know I speak for all the Officers when I say thank you to Past State President Rick Wunder for conducting the Installation Ceremony. We promise to do our best to represent the New York State Elks Association, to the best of our ability.

In accepting this position on Friday morning, I spoke about my intention to focus on local lodge issues and try to bring a new enthusiasm and commitment to making each and every Lodge in our State successful. Lodge success will as a biproduct, bring State Associations and Grand Lodge success. As you know by now my slogan is “Meeting the Challenge”. I hope you will work with me to identify those elements of our lodge operations that can be improved, and put a plan in place to address our shortcomings and amplify our strong points. We can not change over night to the prosperity of the 80s and early 90s, but we can begin the process of remaking ourselves so that we can make certain the Order of Elks continues to enjoy its place as a key member of the communities in which we live.

So let's talk about our many Challenges and how do we meet them. I will list a few, declining membership rolls, inability to find qualified officers to lead our Lodges, increased fixed costs brought on by higher utility costs and increasing property taxes. How about everyone is so busy they can not commit extra time to our organization, as it would take time away from the family, disposable income is at a low point due to the economy. Let’s stop here, we could go on and on and end up with a list as long as your arm.

Let’s turn the page and focus on what we know makes a Lodge successful.

In my years in Elkdom, I have been lucky enough to see many Lodges, some successful and some not so. There are several themes that are apparent in virtually every successful Lodge.

As we discussed on Friday, I see 3 major areas that are linked and need to be addressed, and each one deserves equal attention, as without balance we can not sustain long term success, which must be our ultimate goal.

The first leg of our triangle is Community Involvement. It is the fundamental principle of our fraternity, it is why we exist. Our many programs that are in place to help those less fortunate than ourselves, support those men and women who fight for our freedom, the programs that help our youth to learn the values that will build our communities and our Order for years to come. These programs all have a purpose, and if properly conducted and publicized to both our communities and our members, they will generate pride in all members in what we do for our respective communities and draw potential community members to our doors to support our efforts and hopefully choose to become members. Conversely, if we are not active in our communities, we will continue to struggle to attract capable and enthusiastic new members, that will continue our trend of decreasing membership and stagnation in our programs, not anything that we as the leaders of our Lodges should accept.

Now think for a moment about how your Lodge is involved in the community. Is there a commitment to INVOLVEMENT, or do you simply support the community. It is a wonderful thing to send a check to the food pantry, it is better to collect food and bring it to the food pantry. It is great to sponsor a little league team, but it is so much better to attend their games, or have them and their parents participate with you in a parade. It is wonderful that so many Lodges send money to the support the Local DARE program, it is so much better to go to the school and participate in the DARE Graduation, or sponsor and participate in a Drug Awareness program at the school. The message is to get out of your Lodge building and participate in activities in your community. Make a commitment to do something each month that will put you in front of the community. I have seen it with my own eyes in my own Lodge. Just in one short year through the involvement in our local Community Coalition, we have been able to foster a much better working relationship than we have ever had with our local school system. The reaction that we have gotten from the administration is that they never really knew what we did. How many times do we all hear that in our travels. Now they are asking us to partner with them in several areas and we look forward to a much better relationship with them in the future.

The second leg of our triangle is Lodge Activities. In order to keep our membership engaged and enthusiastic, it is important to have functions and activities that are of interest to the members, take advantage of your facilities, and generate income. The more different types of activities that are available in the Lodge, the more different types of members you can attract. By the way, we all work very hard in our Lodges, it is permissible to have a good time, let me restate that, we need to have a good time.

The Lodge that is so focused on program initiatives and does not have a social aspect will likely not be able to sustain itself for very long, as all work and no play, will make Elkdom dull! We all know better that when we work we do have a good time, and an active and well rounded social calendar draws members to the Lodge and generates badly needed revenue. When your Lodge is full of members and guests having a good time, use the opportunity to speak about a program, distribute a flier for people to sign up and work an event…make your Lodge Activities and Community Activities complement each other.

The base of our triangle says Strong Leaders. There is a reason that this is the base of our triangle, I feel it is the single most important aspect of our Lodge’s success or failure. In virtually every case I know of, a Lodge that has failed, has suffered from a lack of qualified members to lead the day to day activities. I know this may not be the case everywhere, particularly in situations where severe economic difficulties have made the maintenance of a Lodge facility impossible. Any Lodge that can not attract energetic capable individuals to become members, and ultimately volunteer to become active in leadership positions is in for real trouble. This is a bad problem in many Lodges, and it is difficult to fix over night, but we must try to make change because none of us want to think of the alternative.

So what do we need to do? Here are few things we can all do that will help.

Be open to listening to new ideas. We need to be aggressive in trying new things be they new events, new programs in the community, or opening up an officer position to a new member with seemingly crazy ideas. Without innovation we become stagnate, and that is not what we want, we want growth and enthusiasm.

Stop discussion of controversial topics outside of the meetings where that should take place. The Lounge is no place to fix important issues of the Lodge, and discord between officers and members that is allowed to become open to the membership in any forum will stop many qualified members from volunteering for leadership positions.

Discourage your Exalted Ruler from doing everything, even if he wants to. Many people think it is easier to do something themselves than delegate it to someone else. This is often true, but it does not foster a sense that the Lodge is actually looking for new help. The same old members are doing everything, so new ideas can’t find their way to the front. Also, members see what some Officer’s are required to do and say there is no way that have that kind of time, so they don’t volunteer for anything. The old addige that many hands make light work is very true, and in this context it is vitally important. We want our leadership positions is appear to the new member as important, rewarding, and doable.

The last point I will make is that if your Community Activities are not apparent, and your Lodge is not an active, fun place to be, the best and the brightest in your communities will not be interested in joining us. We need every Lodge to be active in all three areas…what I says you have to have the “whole package” in order to be consistently successful. As we prepare to return home I encourage each one of us to seriously reflect on our own lodge. Think about how well we are doing in each area and create a plan to improve our performance in each area. Does your Lodge have the whole package, if not let’s see what we can do together to build it. The process of addressing our areas need is the essence of our motto “Meeting the Challenge”.

Donor Awareness. What is it? How can we help? Information and communication is key. Organ donation is common place now, having been a mainstream medical procedure for over twenty five years. There are many ways to make a statement about your intentions concerning organ donation. The fact of the matter is that virtually all of them have no real standing with the medical community. The first and most important step, if you are interested in making your organs available upon your death, is to discuss it with your family. Our hope is to have anyone interested in making the gift of life, is to record your intention in a way that is legally binding, making sure that your wishes will be carried out as you wish. Organ donation can be addressed specifically in a living will or health care proxy. The easiest way is to go to the national directory at www.giftoflife.com and register. It is also advisable to continue to make you wishes known by using your driver’s license or organ donor card, even the back of your Elks Membership card carries an organ donation declaration. Thank you on behalf of all the families who have received a gift of life like we did as well as all those people in our community who may be desperately waiting for this gift. They need to know that there are many people out there that support them as they struggle to meet their challenge every day.

Thank you all for your support. Pat and I are looking forward to our trip across the state to meet as many of you as we can and talk about how to build each one of local our lodges so that we Meet the Challenge and as a result re-energize our Order and create the model to sustain our success now and for the years to come.

5/22/2010