Dear God luvs America,
I'm a Knight, too, although an active one.
I have a question, if you don't mind.
What can Council leaderships do to get inactive Knights to be a little more active?
Those of us in Council leadership would be happy if a man came to a couple of meetings a year, and worked at a couple of events a year, and maybe came to one or two other social events where all the man had to do was enjoy with his family.
What can we do for the 75% of our men whom we don't see even a single time each year?
Thanks in advance,
DGK sitetest, PGK
We've found that focusing the council on fewer tasks does much to grow the participation rate. Many councils get so eager to do so much that they end up "biting off more than they can chew."
Focus on smaller, more locally focused activity.
We're in a large city (eighth biggest in the nation). Our council spent far too much time on outreach in the poorest parts of the city -- to the cost of not focusing on the poor in our own neighborhood. Knights are good guys, but it's my belief that altruism is a myth. We want to see the effects of our work. Working locally enables this.
Therefore, getting a bunch of Knights together to re-roof the home of the poor shut-in widow down the street gets much more participation than gathering a group of Knights to paint a house 30 miles away from the parish.
In addition, think of what your council can do for the actual parish or parish school. We do groundskeeping, building maintenance and hold scholarship fundraisers for our parish kids.
We still have our obligations to support national and state charities - but we're focusing more on local needs than in years past.
I say this tongue and cheek....expand the day to 28 hours or make the week 8 days long..
If I was able to get a newsletter on what may be happening it would probably help- or maybe even a website for local chapters where I could logon and find out what was happening (who knows, there may be one)....I'd hate to have someone keep calling and me say, "sorry I'm to busy"....it would be a turn off for everyone..