Make Your Activities the Focus of Recruitment Efforts
Actions always speak louder than words. When a man sees the good works your council is doing, he’ll naturally want to be a part of that.
Just as you need to approach membership recruitment a little at a time, you should take the same approach with conducting service programs. Rather than conducting a large number of programs look at focusing your efforts on a handful of initiatives that you can be especially successful at.
Talk to your pastor and the members of your council to brainstorm on what the needs of your parish and your community are. Once you determine these needs, get a feel from your members on which ones they are interested in trying to tackle. Then determine what your resources are for doing this.
Keep in mind the Knights of Columbus offers a variety of service activities that jurisdictions and councils can adapt to their local needs and resources: Coats for Kids; Food for Families; Global Wheelchair Mission; Habitat for Humanity; Special Olympics; Ultrasound Initiative; Free Throw and/or Soccer Challenge; Substance Abuse Aware Poster Contest; Veterans Support; to name just a few.
Once you determine what activities you want to conduct, get focused and get active.
Invite your prospects to help out at your service initiatives. Ask them to bring along their families. Make sure they have the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the activity and that they come out with a very positive experience. Include these nonmember volunteers and any type of follow up to the volunteer event (a “thank you” dinner; a debriefing; planning for the next activity).
After the prospect has helped out a couple of times, ask if he’s interested in becoming a Knight (since he’s already been active in what the council does, it should be an easy sell at this point). Remind him, that along with the continued opportunity to make a difference in his parish and community, membership will give him access to the Order’s top-rated insurance.
Always remember, that attendance at council meetings is not the primary purpose of membership in the Knights. Meetings are only for planning the council’s activities and are not an end onto themselves. Having a large amount of members participating in council activities with only a few attending meetings, is always preferable to having a large number of members at meeting.