10/23/2016 Open House Reflection

Now that the open house has come and passed, I'm curious how well it went for everybody? My lodge is in a small rural town of about 2000 people and we had five or six people stop in to ask questions or look around the lodge. This is honestly five or six more people than I expected.

How did it go at your lodges? If you had to do it again, what would you do differently? How did you feel about the idea overall?

Only one we had was our DDGM checking up on us.

Was it advertised? Weve done it the last 2 yrs here in Santa fe NM and had close to i think it 600 the first yr if not.more and a few hundred this past yr. We advertised the crap out of it

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It was, but we're in a rural area. To get the kind of turnout y'all did we'd have to get every non-Mason in the county to show up!

Ripcord22A said:

Was it advertised? Weve done it the last 2 yrs here in Santa fe NM and had close to i think it 600 the first yr if not.more and a few hundred this past yr. We advertised the crap out of it

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Did it result in an increase in membership?

I think we got a couple of petitions, but that wasn't really the intent for us. As a recruiter I constantly get asked that question "well did the event lead to any interviews or commitments?" 99% of the time its no, the day of the event did not, but someone saw us and maybe not next week/month/year but when they are ready to make that decision they are gonna remember talking to me that day.

Dang i would have loved to go to a open house

New England states have been doing annual open houses for decades. They advertise as heavily as the local lodges can afford. Lodges put up banners for inexpensive advertising. Momentum matters.

When Texas required an open house the first thing I noticed is there was no required publicity program to go with it. If you're going to imitate a program that's successful in other states t least pay SOME attention to how they do it!

I don't expect the Brothers coming up the grand line to read about what is going on in other states simply because coming up the grand line takes so much effort. That's why recommendations from other jurisdictions are supposed to come through PGMs and/or the current GM based on attending the Conference of Grand Masters.

If it's continued next year - Pay attention to how it's done in states that are successful at it. In particular publicity galore and in advance.

We got on local talk radio...

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We had several guys come by for a tour and to meet the brethren who were there. I believe that three left with a flier and maybe a petition. While it wasn't an overwhelming success, it was a start. We're currently talking about maybe going to two open house events per year, but that's still up in the air. While it's a good idea from the standpoint of improving lodge visibility in the community, I suspect that we would be better served by hosting a "bring a friend to lodge" night, as done by Davy Crockett Lodge in San Antonio. I visited there for their last one (early October), and they probably had a dozen guys there for it. The program was first rate, and it's obvious that they take it very seriously. They've been successful enough with it that they've been doing it for several years, and this year, it was covered at the GLoT Officers Leadership Training Program. I believe that they had around a dozen potential candidates visit for the program. Even if they don't petition, that's a dozen men who know more about Masonry than they would have otherwise, and that seems to me a good thing.

We have over a thousand come through the SLC Masonic Temple at our Spring open house. We have received press coverage. It's useful.

Dow Mathis said:

We had several guys come by for a tour and to meet the brethren who were there. I believe that three left with a flier and maybe a petition. While it wasn't an overwhelming success, it was a start. We're currently talking about maybe going to two open house events per year, but that's still up in the air. While it's a good idea from the standpoint of improving lodge visibility in the community, I suspect that we would be better served by hosting a "bring a friend to lodge" night, as done by Davy Crockett Lodge in San Antonio. I visited there for their last one (early October), and they probably had a dozen guys there for it. The program was first rate, and it's obvious that they take it very seriously. They've been successful enough with it that they've been doing it for several years, and this year, it was covered at the GLoT Officers Leadership Training Program. I believe that they had around a dozen potential candidates visit for the program. Even if they don't petition, that's a dozen men who know more about Masonry than they would have otherwise, and that seems to me a good thing.

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I'm on Davey Crockett's mailing list... i think Corky put me in contact with them and I reached out to Chris Williams.

Do the successful open houses happen every year ? We've gone 3 in a row, first year about 500 through, last year I think about 250. We piggy back Open Houses Melbourne. I'm wondering if I do it next year. It's an open invite and not focused on recruitment but sharing our building and history. More of a PR exercise. If recruitment was my goal, 'bring a friend' will have a higher numbers attend and result in more candidates.... but my pitch might be understanding what we do and seeing if it's of interest.... at the end of the day, planning, execution and budget and goals are key in marketing - and you can't do that half arsed and expect amazing results.

D is right, promotion is key, but also understanding of your end goal and checking your actions against that intent. Look to those who do it well. Glenn seems to be onto something.... Ours is good for PR because unlike other "bring a friend" and many other open days, our visitors do not have Masonic Links, but recruitment is not its central goal. PR is. Followed by promotion of our hire space then understanding the buildings history in a historical context, which is tied to Freemasonry, then understanding Freemasonry.... THEN giving visitors the opportunity to join. First year we were bad at recruitment because it was not part of our plan, last time a lot better.....