Let's Do Business Right
Our Lodge can't thrive unless we do
I’ve been making speeches to groups of Freemasons for a mighty long time. If you’ve heard me speak as Worshipful Master, District Deputy, Grand Lodge Elected Officer, or Grand Master, you’ve quite likely heard me talk about the need for more fellowship, more activities, and more education within our Lodges.
And a whole lot less business.
One of the finest Masons I’ve ever known, VW Cope said to me immediately after walking me between some pillars and up a winding staircase into a sacred space:
“No man ever became a Mason to sit through a business meeting.”
It’s been a lot of years since my Passing to the Degree of Fellowcraft Mason, but I still hear his words as if he spoke them to me yesterday.
And that has been my goal ever since. To do my part to create truly wonderful Masonic experiences. To create a Freemasonry so great that it lives up to our legend.
We do that by giving Masons a compelling reason to come to Lodge. By creating spaces that foster amazing fellowship, Lodges that offer enlightening Masonic education, events that are both fun and bonding.
To all of those things, if we hope to create Legendary Freemasonry, the business of the Lodge must take a backseat.
But that doesn’t mean that we can ignore the business side of Freemasonry, or do a bad job with it. It simply means that it should not be our primary focus.
Ultimately, taking care of business, and taking care of it correctly, is necessary if we are to create truly great Masonic experiences. For if the business is not done, the whole structure will fall.
This week has been a full on business week for me so far. I’m one of the few Masons out there who enjoys serving on Temple Corporation boards, so Monday evening was spent chairing the board for my local Temple. I enjoyed it, and we got a lot of good work done, and done well, but I know that most of the men on the board with me would rather be doing something else.
Otherwise on the business front, I’ve spent the past three days trying to help a neighboring Lodge get its act together financially. It’s a good little Lodge that does truly remarkable work for its community, but the finances had been neglected. Neglected to the point that the Lodge didn’t even know how much money it had, and indeed Lodge members thought it to be in a very weak financial position, when in reality it is reasonably strong.
But here’s the thing. By not knowing their financial position they made decisions that weren’t the best for the Lodge, so that they could dig themselves out of a financial hole that didn’t actually exist. They believed themselves on a path to insolvency when in fact they are on anything but. That’s what happens when you somehow collectively forget that you own investment accounts that make up about 75% of your net worth.
Ultimately all of this will get taken care of. The Lodge will get its books in order, and the members of the Lodge will be given an accurate financial portrait of the Lodge’s assets.
They will be able to move forward, and continue not only the amazing work they do in the community, but move forward with improving their own Lodge Experience as well.
But it took a brand spanking new Mason to wonder about things, sense that something wasn’t adding up, and asking questions to make anyone else take note. Experienced Masons never noticed the problem, the new fellow with fresh eyes did.
And it took a Grand Master to demand that the answers be found to that new Mason’s questions.
I say none of this to pick on the Lodge in question. I love that little Lodge, and have for many years.
I say this to point out that if we want to have amazing fellowship, great educational experiences, and superb events, we have to take care of business, and see that it is done properly, for in our capitalistic society, without proper finances nothing is possible.
I close this brief essay again thinking about VW Cope’s words.
His message was that no Lodge would ever find success if the majority of its time and focus was spent on business.
Business must be secondary to the essential parts of Freemasonry.
But it still must get done. And it must get done correctly, lest the structure collapse around us.
MW Brother Cameron, I write to you today as a recovering CFO. As such, whenever I join the board of a not-for-profit company I'm immediately stereotyped and they make me the treasurer. This has also been the case in my Lodge and my Royal Arch Chapter.
As one who has been trained in the art of business I offer two pieces of advice: 1) Test your assumptions, and 2) Don't manage by slogan.
When I joined my Lodge I attended a holiday party and naively asked who to pay for my meal. The Worshipful Master smiled and laughed and said, "Don't worry, we have enough money to party like this for the rest of our lives." The following year I got a look at the books and found that we did have what appeared to be a handsome cash balance but I also discovered that our balance had steadily declined for the past 10 years. So if the assumption is that we can party for the rest of our lives find out how much it costs to party for one year and then do the math. Turned out that our last party was about 8 years hence unless we changed our habits.
Slogans about finances are a lazy way to sound knowledgeable. One very accomplished Mason once declared that Lodges should not invest like senior citizens, they should invest like young people. (If you say that with conviction it almost sounds like wisdom.) I quickly corrected him and pointed out that senior citizens invest the way they do because they don't have income but young people, on the other hand, do. This was an important distinction because other that earnings on our investments we didn't have any income. Another very accomplished Mason made an appeal to the Lodge for a large charitable donation. Among his justifications was that "the money isn't doing us any good sitting in the bank." What a great call to action with one meaningful clarification: we did need the money to be able to run the Lodge.
I'm not advocating that we hoard our cash. I am advocating that we carefully look at facts and thoughtfully craft assumptions about what our future needs will be. Then we can establish reserves, make appropriate donations, and maybe even have a party.
It's like I always say about managing digital assets. It's just housekeeping, and it isn't important unless it doesn't get done.