Fundraising

Our lodge is fixing to have a vidalia onion sale. I was surprised to hear how successful this is... apparently folks like onions.

bupton52 said:

Besides fish frys, bake sales, pancake breakfasts, and spaghetti dinners, what are some ways that your lodge/chapter makes money?

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Cigar Night, St. Patricks Dinner with authentic bag pipers. We have a pro wrestling night coming up. Numbered Calendar sales. First monday of the month we pull numbers for the calendars and pay out to whomever won. (We are allowed to do this in NJ so long as we meet the local law requirements for gaming.) If we sell all 1000 we are guaranteed 15,000 dollars. (we usually average 600 ~ 800 sold. Each year is different.

jamie.guinn said:

Our lodge is fixing to have a vidalia onion sale. I was surprised to hear how successful this is... apparently folks like onions.

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My Shrine in Chicago, Medinah, sells Vidalia onions by the truckload every year. Those onions rock.

Our Lodge holds a barbecue cookoff every year to raise funds for scholarships and our building fund. We are also discussing having a crawfish boil & some other projects yet to be fleshed out.

Add "touch-a-truck" to any event brings in the families.


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admarcus1 said:

Add "touch-a-truck" to any event brings in the families.

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Could you please tell us a little more about this?

Touch-a-truck is fairly common up here by many organizations as a way to draw people to a community event. You get a firetruck and/or police van, ambulance, construction vehicles, etc, and give kids a chance to sit inside or climb on backb usually they are older vehicles no longer in regular use. Kids go nuts for it. At our lodge open house a few weeks ago, we had one of the towns back up firetruck, brought and supervised by a firefighter friend of one of the brothers. One truck was good for a smaller event like ours. The town fair usually has 5 to 10 trucks. Often the first responders who bring the vehicles will hand out safety information for parents.


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Bill_Lins77488 said:

Could you please tell us a little more about this?

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Park some fire trucks, big rigs and otber various large vehicles in a parking lot. Kids love it. My 16 month old loves school buses. He would probably go crazy in a school bus garage and I would donate 5 dollars to see his face.

Great idea!

For the last few years, we've done a wine and cheese tasting event that has been very successful. However, a lot of Grand Lodges won't allow anything to do with alcohol, so it's not an option in a lot of jurisdictions. In Minnesota it's no problem as long as there's no alcohol in the actual lodge room.

We tried our first crawfish boil Saturday at Cypress. Not a glowing success but we did net approximately $450 for our four-hour effort. As always, we learned a few things. And, as always, it involved getting the word out and event timing.

Several events were going on in Houston, including San Jacinto Day and a visit there by the Grand Master. By the time leadership realized the scheduling conflict it was to late.

Three glowing success stories came from the event.

First, we had a chance to meet, in person, a happy, smiling, and VERY active two-year old who carries a body cast down to his lower hips after coming through a successful surgery up at the Scottish Rite Hospital. His parents are very grateful for the doctors and care there.

Second, we received petitions to our OES and masonic groups.

And third, but far from least, our Master was supported by his officer group, past masters, master masons and entered apprentices en mass. All had a good day of fellowship and, I would suspect, a very good night of sleep.

Life's still good down here in Houston, Texas Brethren!

We operate the concession stands at the local coliseum for a number of events throughout the year, and also operate the Coke stand for the State Fair over a ten-day run each October. Did a fish fry in July for the local Demolay, and a spaghetti supper for the RARA.

We do a citrus sale every year. We have a connection with a farmer in the valley. We take preorders, add about 10% for any orders that come in (leftovers go to our local emergency women's shelter) and then call in the order to the farmer and take a truck & trailer to go fetch em.

We make a decent amount of money off of it, mainly due.. I think, to 1 brother who passes them out as Christmas gifts to his clients.

Our Rainbow girls recently started selling baked goods at our stated meetings, and I think they're now also visiting area OES. They are making fairly decent money.

Brother_Steve said:

Cigar Night, St. Patricks Dinner with authentic bag pipers. We have a pro wrestling night coming up. Numbered Calendar sales. First monday of the month we pull numbers for the calendars and pay out to whomever won. (We are allowed to do this in NJ so long as we meet the local law requirements for gaming.) If we sell all 1000 we are guaranteed 15,000 dollars. (we usually average 600 ~ 800 sold. Each year is different.

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How does pro wrestling night work? Genuinely curious.


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Fundraising is a waste of Masonic time. Fundraising is not practicing Freemasonry and it takes valuable time away from that.

If you do not have enough money to do what needs to be done or even what you want to do, then raise dues. Dues should be $200-$300/year.

Keeping dues low and then supplementing the treasury with fundraisers allows those Brothers who do nothing, who show up at meetings maybe once per year when there is a special occasion to skate by without pulling their fair share of the load - because fund raising is performed by those Masons who are already super active in the Lodge already.

What you do when you place extra burdens on those who are already carrying the load is that you burn these Brothers out and ultimately lose them. Make everybody pay their fair share.

Squire Bentley said:

Fundraising is a waste of Masonic time. Fundraising is not practicing Freemasonry and it takes valuable time away from that.

If you do not have enough money to do what needs to be done or even what you want to do, then raise dues. Dues should be $200-$300/year.

Keeping dues low and then supplementing the treasury with fundraisers allows those Brothers who do nothing, who show up at meetings maybe once per year when there is a special occasion to skate by without pulling their fair share of the load - because fund raising is performed by those Masons who are already super active in the Lodge already.

What you do when you place extra burdens on those who are already carrying the load is that you burn these Brothers out and ultimately lose them. Make everybody pay their fair share.

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Our fundraiser that I discussed above is not to provide operating funds for the Lodge. The proceeds are strictly for the charitable giving of the Lodge.

MarkR said:

Our fundraiser that I discussed above is not to provide operating funds for the Lodge. The proceeds are strictly for the charitable giving of the Lodge.

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Well it could be for a new driveway for the Lodge, or new jewels for the officers, or scholarships given out. It doesn't make any difference. If you are working a fundraisers for any reason it is taking away from the Masonic life and the family life of those Brothers who are working the fund raiser. And the workers are most likely the ones who do all the other work of the Lodge anyway. That seems to be a common problem in most organizations.

But if 10% of the Lodge is actually doing all the work of the Lodge, then asking this 10% to do even more (who else is going to do it?) is dumping on an already overburdened group of hard working Brothers. Have you ever considered the prospect that you are asking too much?

Charity should be built into the budget so that it makes everybody contribute, those that come to Lodge and those that do not and those that work hard to operate the Lodge and those who do not. Everybody pays and that means everybody contributes.

Retention is a big issue in many Lodges across the nation. Lodges can bring in new candidates, but once raised they cannot seem to have but a small percentage remain active. Maybe that is because what you are expecting of the Brethren is not what they had in mind when they joined. And maybe you ask too much. Freemasonry is a voluntary association not a job nor a career. Stop treating it as if it was.

If there are Brothers in your Lodge that spend more than 20 hours a week on Freemasonry (including the Side Bodies) then stop asking them to do anything else. Ask others. Call up those that rarely come to Lodge and ask them to contribute some time to the Lodge.

If you cannot afford to increase the dues to pay for your "special charity project," then perhaps that is something that should be left for another day. And if your Lodge is spending an inordinate amount of time on helping others perhaps you have distorted what Freemasonry is all about. Freemasonry is not charity. Charity is one of the big 3 - Brotherly love, Relief and Truth. All 3 should have equal time in your lodge. And if you are spending an inordinate amount of time and money on saving the world, perhaps you are killing yourself.

Now this may not be you and all this may not apply to you. But I write this because I know that it does apply to many others.

Frederic L. Milliken
"The Beehive"

If my Lodge does a fundraiser, and we want to do it as brothers, it's almost more about the fellowship and camaraderie than the actual fundraising itself. We like each other and just hang out quite a bit. Why not be doing something worthwhile for the Lodge we love at the same time? And why should it bother you if we want to do one?


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Charity, the virtue, or the practice of unlimited love and kindness, is the part of Freemasonry described in the three rungs of the ladder. This is not the same thing as the tenet of Relief. Either is giving some spare change to make oneself feel better.