A group of friends sit at the bar at the Portland Elks Lodge. The boilerplate age for the society is 74. From the left are Lucille Leeney, Pat Woodbury, Alan Mancini, Clayton Cooledge and Linda Cooledge. Ben McCanna/Staff Lensman Buy this Photo

Wednesday is buffet night at the Elks Club lodge in Portland.

On a contempo Wednesday, a couple of dozen members gathered in the club's dining room, filled with dark, round tables arrayed around a horseshoe-shaped bar.

For $6, the Elks get pizza and brownies. Mixed drinks at the bar are just $4.50 and the conversations are light and lively – many of the members are old friends.

Merely the cardinal word there is "sometime": Leanne Ladd, 53, of S Portland appears to be the youngest person in the room and Martha Binette, 68, the leader of the club, said the boilerplate age of the Portland Elks is effectually 74.

Although Binette said the gild is calculation members subsequently years of decline – nearly ten will be inducted next month – it's going to take a pretty significant influx of younger members to get that average age downwardly. Similar many other service and fraternal organizations in America, the Elks thrived for a century, but it and other venerable clubs with charitable underpinnings are struggling to survive in the new millennium.

Groups like the Elks and Rotary say their membership is graying and the ability to attract younger members runs headlong into a preference among millennials to wait for social engagement online.

"There'south been a huge decline in service clubs in America," said Bowen Depke, membership chairman of the Portland Rotary. He said the Portland Rotary has about 125 members, roughly one-half the number information technology had 2 or three decades ago.

Depke said the onetime line organizations like the Rotary – the Portland chapter was formed in 1915 – are suffering from a surfeit of choices for immature adults looking to volunteer, while the ability to volunteer for many is squeezed by the press for time to piece of work and spend with family.

"It's simply a crazy, decorated globe," Depke said, "and in that location are all sorts of service organizations out in that location. In that location's merely choices and choices."

That'due south one reason why it'south hard to recruit new members and difficult to go along them, said Amanda Kaiser, who runs Kaiser Insights, a consultancy based in Pennsylvania that advises nonprofits on how to attract and retain members.

"There's a lot of competition for members and it'due south difficult to retain them past that first year," she said. Kaiser recommends teaming new members with an experienced member to act as a mentor, often for up to a year.

Service organizations in Maine are no different from similar groups around the state, Kaiser said, where most are having problem alluring new, especially younger, members. She couldn't provide information, but said information technology's clear memberships in service clubs like the Rotary, Elks, Kiwanis and Lions clubs have plummeted.

She as well said that a lack of new and younger members can get a vicious wheel, since many organizations rely on give-and-take of mouth to concenter people to join. Without those younger members coming in and sticking around, she said, the organizations lose that personal approach to alluring new members.

That points to why attracting young people is becoming critical to service and congenial organizations, said Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of the Maine Association of Nonprofits.

"Engaging millennials is a common topic" she hears amongst her membership, Hutchins said. Her organization provides a four-month grooming program for young professionals looking to serve on the boards of local nonprofits.

One proposition she has for those nonprofits is to expect for ways to work with, rather than counter, younger adults' affinity for online appointment.

"When y'all call up near how we're all spending our time these days, nosotros're challenged with 'Practice I actually need to do this in person? Can we do information technology electronically?' " Hutchins said. Only so far, few organizations accept abandoned in-person meetings for an online connection.

THE ATTRACTION OF PROJECTS

Depke said the Rotary, which used to have a strict requirement of 100 per centum omnipresence at its meetings, has relaxed that rule because making the weekly Friday noon meetings of the Portland Rotary can be a claiming for some. He said other chapters in Greater Portland offering morning or early evening meetings as an alternative and, while makeup meetings are notwithstanding encouraged, the emphasis has shifted to taking part in service projects.

"Y'all make information technology (to meetings) when y'all can. It'south really nigh the service projects," he said, adding that he encourages members who are recruiting younger potential members to take them to a service projection rather than a coming together.

Depke said he was attracted to the Rotary because of the wide range of projects the arrangement supports. Locally, the Rotary provides volunteers and raises coin for groups such every bit the Preble Street Resource Centre and the New Mainers Task Forcefulness, and it provides mentoring to young people at the Long Creek Youth Development Middle. Internationally, the Rotary is involved in vaccination programs, providing hearing aids to the needy and supporting development projects.

A few years ago, a Maine member noted the demand for artificial limbs in the Dominican Republic, where the Rotary has projects to provide health care and make clean h2o. The proposal was approved by higher-ups in the Rotary, he said, and now several hundred people in the state accept arm extensions, thank you to the Rotary's efforts.

"If you join an organization, you can get critical mass" that is ofttimes lacking with projects backed by smaller groups, Depke said.

SOCIALIZING WITH YOUR PEERS

The Elks seem to attract many members for their social activities.

The Portland gild, off outer Congress Street, has about 540 members and has been growing slightly in contempo years, although it remains well below where it was two or three decades ago, co-ordinate to its leader, Binette.

Ladd, of South Portland, said she joined the guild every bit a social outlet about a year agone, later on her husband died. Her mother and brother, longtime members of the Elks, suggested she join.

She keeps going for "these silly people," Ladd said, gesturing to those around the horseshoe-shaped bar in the club's principal room, used primarily for dining. She as well was involved in the Elks' back up for the Elevation Project, which honors expressionless veterans past placing stones with their initials on them on mountaintops around the state.

The Elks likewise heighten money to support the Maine Children'southward Cancer Programme, said Binette, whose title as caput of the lodge is "Exalted Ruler."

"Information technology's more similar Exhausted Ruler," joked Binette, who helps oversee operations of the lodge, waitresses in the dining room on Fridays and works as a abode health care aide a couple of nights a week. She joined the Elks 14 years agone and chaired the lodge'southward scholarship commission earlier condign Exalted Ruler.

Binette said the society has attracted some people from local businesses – Unum and a medical role building are neighbors – that see it every bit a user-friendly place to grab an cheap potable and dinner afterwards piece of work.

The lodge has recently had a facelift. It sold off some surrounding country and put $800,000 into a renovation. It now consists of a few offices and two main rooms – the dining room and a large multi-office hall that'south used for membership meetings and other events, such as weddings.

Outside that hall sits the original table and chairs used by the leaders of the Elks at their showtime location on Bound Street in Portland. Binette said no 1's allowed to sit in the chairs, only not considering of some obscure Elks rule – the wooden chairs are croaky. To a higher place the table is a big, mounted elk'southward head.

Lucille Leeney, 76, of South Portland remembers when the lodge had an indoor pond pool in a carve up building. She used to accept her grandchildren to the pool, which she said was closed about vi years agone.

At present the Elks are primarily for socializing, Leeney said.

"For people our historic period, it'due south a nighttime out," she said. "You don't take to spend a lot for a meal."

But others recollect a time when the Elks were a bigger draw with a more active membership.

"This place used to exist packed. You couldn't become in hither on a Friday dark," said Bob Berry, 77, of South Portland. Berry, who joked that he's been a fellow member "all my life," has actually been with the Elks for about 35 years.

"Times take changed and young people are non coming," he said.

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