This one isn't mine, but I think it applies to the situation
Let me counter your question with a hypothetical scenario:
You've joined a very old and prestigious gardening club. You complete the process it takes to join and pay the cheap membership fees. With great excitement you attend your first gardening club meeting.
It starts out as a typical business meeting you've seen elsewhere. The members open the meeting, read the minutes, discuss business, vote on things, etc, ect...all the while you wait for the topic to turn to gardening. To your disappointment, gardening is only briefly mentioned when opening and closing the meeting as a formality and you certainly don't feel as though you've -learned- anything. You resolve to attend a few more meetings with hopes of learning something but you quickly realize the norm for the gardening club is to really not discuss gardening at all. You're disappointed but eh, it was easy and cheap to join so you quit.
I'd argue that there's a parallel between my story and Freemasonry. I hear lots of solutions that lodges have come up with to get new members but few people seem to suggest simply teaching Freemasonry during their meetings. IMO it won't matter how many people you raise in one night, how easy you make it to join, how much you advertise, or how low your dues are...if a lodge isn't offering the product people signed up for then low retention can be expected. Many people join expecting to learn how to become better men, after all, that's what we tell them Freemasonry does, however there is very little taking place which actually does this.
