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My Brothers,

     Each year I look at the trends of our State Council's population. I would like to share this with you and hopefully influence your council's membership efforts. Displayed below is our population as of January 1, 2024. It does show that we are all getting older! lol! But most importantly it is showing that we are not refilling the ranks of younger knights at a pace that matches what we will lose, due to death, in our older ranks. As an example, our membership under age 45,  854 (141+330+383) members, just barely matches what we will lose in the next 10 years in our Over 85 age group (721 members). The next Age Group of 75-84 represents 1,338 members or around 12% of our total NHSC population, we will lose those members in the next 20 years! To replace that many members will be very challenging but if we can focus our Membership efforts on bringing younger men into our councils we can refill these ranks. Our local communities need knights to address the needs of the financially challenged, homeless and elderly. Our Church needs knights to support and grow our faith.

   Ten or twenty years may seem like a very long time, but it is not! Each year we will lose a percentage of each of our age groups. On top of each bar on the bar chart above are three numbers. The first is the Percentage this Age Group is of the total population of our State Council, the second is the number of members in the Age Group and lastly is the Mortality Rate based on actuary data for all men in each age group. I displayed the mortality at the bottom of the chart in red showing the expected number of members we will lose each year. If you add them together you see our expected lose was 267 members for the time period of 1/1/2024 - 12/31/2024. If you match this to our State Council's Membership goal of 302 members. This means that when we make our goal, we will only be ahead by 35 members! 

   So how do we tackle this?

• First we need to change our focus to attract young men to our ranks and one of the best way to do this is to use the youngest members of your council  in your membership activities. Get their ideas! Let them do the talks at mass during your membership drives. Let them explain to others what the Knight mean to their lives and their families.
• Secondly we need to increase the service activity of our councils. Doing more will attract men of our parish and give us the need to recruit new members to assist in those new activities/projects we take on.
• Third, we need to communicate our charitable activities using Social Media! And who is best to do this? Your youngest members! One of the best examples of how this can work in your Council is by looking at the Facebook news channel that was run by PSD Glenn Camley for many years. Glenn recorded the activities of our State Council using pictures, graphics and text. I'm sure he would be more than happy to talk with your younger members to show them how they can start communicating their council's activities using Social Media applications.

Should you have any questions about the chart and this analysis please contact me. I would be very happy to answer questions and discuss how you can implement the advice given above.

Thanks for your interest and may God Bless you and your council family!

Greg

Greg Taillon, PSD
State Training and Development Director