Ongoing failure to recruit new members

One of the ongoing problems in Golden Dawn is our resounding lack of membership. Either you are one of the big Orders and are forcing members to travel across the country to recieve their initiations (ignoring the routes of self-initiation and long distance initiation--I will address these at another time), or you are a small lodge struggling to get (and maintain) a large enough membership to do a Grade ritual.

There seems to be no middle ground.

As a member of a smalll lodge, I have seen us struggle since our formation to attract enough members to maintain operations. And while I have learned a lot about the system thanks to having to learn work arounds for procedures normally outside of my office's responsibilities, there are days where I wish to be able to spend the workload around a little bit more.

Our problem is that no one seems to know that we are here.

Bast Temple, Denver Colorado (Golden Dawn based) is who we are.

When people do find us, they always say that they never knew that we were here. And we have yet to find a successful way of letting people know that we are here. I have seen the figures; no one has ever seen our website. LOL. Not exactly true, a half dozen people look at it every month, and then don't follow through.

Why? My current theory is that we are not a big name Order. That unless you have hundreds of members--which requires tossing out the concept of electing officers amoung other things--that no one believes that your Order is serious. If we had a full blown correspodence course, at least one paid officer, an expensive hall rental, a splashy web page, and tons of online advertisment--maybe then people would be able to find us and consider joining.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, that was my gripe of the day.

Yours in the Great Work, MDE