“I have worked for the last four months with Thomas Jackson and his IdeaBuilder.com staff to assist them in the development of a Lodge Solvency and Viability Review for the Lodges in the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Kansas.
I have been extremely impressed with their work and their ability to adapt to the database conventions and terminology which is unique to our database. It was obvious from the start that they would make every effort to understand our system and our membership in order to make the Lodge Solvency and Viability Review they developed for us as accurate and useful as is humanly possible. In the process of analysis of our data, the IdeaBuilder staff even found discrepancies in our database, the resolution of which has helped to make our database more accurate as well.
While the finished product has not yet been tested in the field, I believe we now have a tool which will be extremely useful in helping our Lodges to set goals for future growth both in membership and financially. It will make it easy for our presenters to demonstrate very graphically how small changes in their goals can produce beneficial long-term results.“
--RWB Robert B. Pfuetze, Grand Secretary, Grand Lodge of Kansas AF&AM
[Received Feb. 11th, 2004 on completion of an SVR Tool for the Grand Lodge of Kansas.]
“As Senior Warden and now as Master, our lodge has found the SVR spreadsheet program to be an invaluable tool in setting priorities, especially during our long range planning meetings. It gave a much more accurate picture of where we are and where we might get to with varying levels of effort. Our final long range plan would have been less accurate and less credible without this kind of information. I've also heard a number of Grand Lodge District Reps say that it helped for them to be able to show their individual lodges how they compared to others in the state.”
--WB Jason Berger, Master 2004, Lake Harriet Lodge #277, MN
“Our Lodge began looking at membership numbers and budgets seriously a couple years ago. Many of the line officers had a vague idea that our annual dues needed to be raised, but this idea was difficult to quantify. It was a gut feeling.
We began to talk with our membership and found that opinions were split right down the middle. Some thought dues should stay the same and others thought they should be raised. Encouraged that others had the same gut feelings, we began looking for ways to present a dues raise to the membership.
We worked with Brother Jackson to apply the SVR Tool to our Lodge’s situation. It helped on a couple of different fronts. First, the section of the tool which shows buying power in real dollars adjusted for inflation and the effects of a COLA were visual proof that swayed many over to thinking that a dues increase was needed in our Lodge. These numbers also replaced the gut feelings of many with hard, concrete numbers. Secondly, the projected membership numbers offered a unique look at where our Lodge was going. During the debate on dues, we were able to look at how small changes to our recruiting efforts could have large effects on future membership. The effect of showing these numbers was amazing. Brothers who had taken the view that the Lodge was declining and there was nothing which could be done to change this now saw that with a small amount of effort the Lodge could grow and prosper in the future.
In the end, the SVR Tool was instrumental in helping win our debate over a dues increase in our Lodge. The lessons learned by our officer line were not lost, as we’ve been using the SVR Tool frequently in our planning activities.“
--Dave Camp, Senior Warden 2004, Wayzata Lodge #205, MN
[Editor's note: I asked Dave to elaborate on Wayzata Lodge's plan to incrementally raise dues by $10 per year until they reached $150. At which point the plan was to implement a COLA to maintain funding at that level. Here's what he said...]
“We were pretty creative in how we explained this to the Lodge. FYI, every December when we elect officers at our stated communication, we also vote on what the dues for the year beginning in 13 months should be... Two months ago (December, 2003) we voted on dues for the year of 2005. I made a motion for $60.00. Someone else made a motion to keep the dues at $50.00. The $60.00 motion passed by a 2 to 1 margin. We had already laid out our plans to raise dues by $10.00 per year until we were at $150.00 per year in 10 years. This was not an arbitrary number - as we put it to the members, "three dollars a week for the Lodge you love should not be too much to ask". The 2 to 1 vote seems to indicate that the members were willing to 'buy in' to what we were trying to do and where we were trying to go. They believe as we do in the future of our lodge.“
Your comment here!