Bloke
Premium Member
Does not work unless you have a large masonic user base , great for GL's and people sell buildings to concentrate lodges into one place to make your proposal work - and we loose buildings (Although your model can work in a location where the costs are low, such as the country.) . .
It takes about $25K PA to keep our building open, without significant maintenance or improvement cost. Say we have about 300 Freemasons using the building (that's probably generous), $25K divided by 300 = $83 per head PA. The only way that's likely to get paid is via rent from lodge use, putting per capita rent model aside, with 2 Craft, 1 Chapter, 1 Mark, 1 RAM, total 5 warrants, we'd need $5K from each lodge - with the Craft at 11 meetings per year, and other orders 5 meetings, that's a total of 37 meetings. The rent would need to be about $675 per meeting. What we actually charge varies from $150 to $300 -even at the highest rate, half that cost. Why ?.. because this week we earned $1K from external hire. No, the trick is not higher dues, our dues are already high enough (My Craft 1 is $350 per year, Craft 2 is $460 per year - neither includes dining cost of $20 and $35 per meeting), the trick is non-masonic income; even if you have to pay an external party to secure it for you.
