Lodge Demographics

[Preston DuBose]

One of the things I inherited as W.M. this year was a handy spreadsheet with (among other things) each lodge member's birth date. I use spreadsheets every day as part of my job and I get a kick out of "data mining" with pivot tables. Here's some interesting trivia about our lodge:

We have 54 members who are Master Masons.

Of those...
-18 have endowed memberships
-21 have visited the lodge in the last 12 months
-10* are under the age of 50
-10* are 80 or older
-the average age of all members is 64*
-the average age of those who have visited in the last 12 months is 60*

I have enough data to calculate ages at the time members were raised, which I think would also be an interesting statistic. I'll probably do that as a follow up. I'd love to get my hands on this kind of data for the entire Grand Lodge and really crunch some numbers. What would be interesting to me would be looking at changes over time-- the average age and (average age when raised) in 2011 versus 10, 20, and 30 years ago, for instance. Maybe when my year as W.M. is done, I'll look at joining the Texas Lodge of Research and seeing what kind of data I can get my hands on. I think a paper on demographics would be both fascinating and useful from a practical standpoint.


*My spreadsheet is a little out of date. It doesn't have the statistics on 3 brothers who have joined in the last year. I have a general idea of their ages, though. Two are younger than the average and one is older.

 

[Mac]

I like the project, brother. Like you, I've recently acquired a similar spreadsheet of data about my Lodge's membership. I don't have the attendance data, but I do have the age stuff. I'll need to play around with this. I know we have a large number of endowed members, probably close to 75%.

One PM told me once "I'd buy one, but if everybody had an endowed membership, we couldn't pay to keep the lights on."

 

[Preston DuBose]

Nothing official or automated about the attendance data, I'm afraid. I just created a new column and marked a "yes" if I remembered seeing them in the last year.

 

[Nate Riley]

I'd be really interested in the age when raised statistics. I'd like to track how that has changed (if so) over time. Also, I think an interesting statistical analysis would be to use that age when raised as the birthdate to get an idea of the age of your lodge in Masonic years.

On the typical lodge night (not official visits, etc.) I would guess that 75 to 90 percent of the audience stands when we are introducing Past Masters and many of those were Master prior to 1990. I would say that in my lodge more of the guys we have raised over the past two year don't come to lodge than do. There may actually be good reasons for that, its just an observation.

 

[Preston DuBose]

Also, I think an interesting statistical analysis would be to use that age when raised as the birthdate to get an idea of the age of your lodge in Masonic years.

Easily done. The average "Masonic age" of those who have attended lodge in the last 12 months is 20 years. The average of those who haven't is 31. The combined average is 27. As above, we have two younger members and one older member who might shift the results slightly.

Taking the average age of members (64) minus the average "Masonic age" (27) means that the average age at which members of our lodge were raised is 37 years old.

 

[Beathard]

Very interesting information, but as a math teacher I have to speak up. You can't take an average of averages.

 

[Preston DuBose]

Fair enough, Beathard. I went back and created a new column that subtracts their birthdate from the date they were raised to arrive at their age at the time they were raised, then I averaged that column. The answer is 37.

 

[Jacob Johnson]

this is really interesting information. I wonder how these demographics differ across our own jurisdiction, and around the world. of course, we can't get all that kind of information!

 

[Preston DuBose]

If I could get a GL data dump, I would ask for a home lodge number and district number to be included for each record. I think it would be interesting to compare average ages and masonic ages from one district to another. If you really wanted to get fancy, it would be neat to create a heat-map of the state to visually compare membership activity. You'd have to be careful not to abuse or misinterpret the data, but it could be used to identify outliers who are quietly doing better than the rest of us.

 

[cemab4y]

The Masonic Service Association of North America, maintains a statistical data base. The information is provided by the various Grand Lodges of the USA and Canada. I have found their information to be very useful, in tracking various trends in Freemasonry.

See:

http://www.msana.com