Put The Cart Before The Horse

 

I have attended and even spoken at a number of large, auspicious Masonic Meetings. A few of them have been so amazing, educational, well-produced, and fraternal that I will never forget them. Among these are the Masonic Roundtable's 300^th anniversary celebration at the George Washington National Masonic Memorial, a York Rite symposium in Iowa where I had the honor of sharing the program with Harry Truman's grandson Clifton Truman Daniel, the annual Grand Master's breakfast in St. Louis, and my own Missouri Lodge of Research's Truman Lectures. These have all been gargantuan Masonic gatherings sometimes with hundreds… yes hundreds… of Brothers in attendance.

A huge crowd is a wonderful part of sharing Masonic Fellowship. In these large gatherings I've had occasion to visit with Brothers from not just other jurisdictions, but even other countries, providing opportunities to compare and share the precious diversity within our craft. Large crowds of Brothers are uplifting and inspiring but, make no mistake, an audience of dozens, or hundreds, is not a prerequisite, for a great Masonic event.

For example, just a few weeks ago I attended yet another one of those auspicious meetings I will never forget – but only about 23-25 Brothers were there. I was honored to be the guest speaker at Homer Lodge 199 in Homer, Illinois. Homer is a small, rural Lodge and by its member's own admission, attendance is not what it should be. To put it in Senior Warden Darin Lahner's words, "we normally are struggling to make a quorum."

Darin documented the full extent of this meeting from its conception to planning to execution in a thorough account in a recent Midnight Freemasons article. To read the full story, search for "A Night to Remember" on the blog.

Darin outlines the steps he took to create a successful event that more than tripled the attendance in his Lodge. I'd like to share those with you. "The funny thing is," said Darin, "it really wasn't that hard to do. To start with, I heavily advertised on social media. I started an Eventbrite event page to get a count of how many would be coming in." I'll come back to those two items in just a minute.

Darin continued with the steps in what he calls a "simple recipe:"

1. Get your lodge's buy-in. That shouldn't be hard to do, but what you're really looking for is a space for the event. If not your Lodge, there's got to be another one close with suitable space.

2. Arrange a speaker. One of the best places to go is the site masonicinstruction.com, which not only lists available speakers, but gives their biographies and summarizes their speaking topics.

3. Plan the event. Pretty self explanatory. This probably will involve a dinner which can be as elaborate as you want, or maybe just ordering in pizza.

4. Finally, hold the event. According to Darin, if you build it, Brethren will come.

The process sounds a lot like the "old-timey" definition of management: plan, organize, activate, control.

I'd like to expand a little on the first two things Darin did. He said he advertised heavily on social media, and started an Eventbrite page.

I've seen events fail where Brothers swear they promoted the event. What did they do? They posted it on FaceBook. Brothers , that's not enough. The key word Darin used is that he advertised it "heavily." FaceBook posts are a dime a dozen – or actually a dime a million. So however you promote the event, become a promotion Ninja.

The next thing Darin did was to set up an Eventbrite page. If you're not familiar with Eventbrite, learn about it and do it. This will more or less get commitments from people to attend.

And I'd like to add a dash of spice to Darin's recipe: Put the cart before the horse.

I know of a Lodge that practices this and they swear it's a sure thing. They do as much pre-planning as possible and come up with a couple of dates, then find out if Brothers are available on those dates. They then tentatively select a speaker and see when he is available. After a bit of coordination they find a good time for the event. Then, they sell tickets to the event, moderately priced to cover the cost of a meal. And only when they have sold enough tickets do they launch the event. In this lodge's case, they also limit attendance to 25 Brothers, and they sell out every time.

In other words, they sell-out the event, then plan the event. Not the way we usually do things. With the way he used Eventbrite, the is close to what Darin did.

Maybe using that old management definition you might say what they do is plan, organize, control, and activate. It might be something you could try. Follow Darin's advice and plan one of those unforgettable events. But see if it doesn't work better when you put the cart before the horse.