Century-old service club organizations that didn’t allow women to join until 20 years ago are being forced to modernize and adjust to today’s busy lifestyles to reverse membership declines.
The nation’s three largest — Lions Clubs International, Rotary International, and Kiwanis International — are reducing requirements for meeting attendance from once a week to every other week or once a month.
They’re creating cyberclubs that conduct business strictly on the Internet and family clubs to involve parents and children. Pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners are being replaced by early-morning meetings at Starbucks and happy-hour gatherings at local pubs to adjust to young professionals’ hectic work schedules.
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“We’re trying to make it fit in to their lifestyles,” says Rob Parker, chief executive of Kiwanis. “We’re making it more flexible and more available.”
The Indianapolis-based group founded in 1915 hit its peak U.S. membership in 1992 when it had almost 325,000 members. The number has been declining up to 5 percent a year since until last year when membership rebounded slightly and hit more than 260,000.