At Oakland No. 61, a Commitment to Outreach

At Oakland No. 61, Outreach Comes First

At Oakland № 61, a phone-banking effort helped establish the lodge as one of Masonic Outreach Services’ best local partners. For that, it is the 2024 Joe Jackson Award recipient.

By Ian A. Stewart

The list of names was daunting: nearly 400 active and inactive Masons to reach, plus more than a hundred widows of deceased members. But as they say, many hands make light work. And so over the course of two weeks last year, a committee of volunteers from Oakland Durant Rockridge № 188 and Live Oak № 61 set out to make contact with every member and widow associated with their lodges to inform them of plans to merge the two groups into what is now Oakland № 61. For Phil Williams and the rest of the newly reorganized lodge, the results were eye-opening— in more ways than one.

First there was the good news. Together, volunteers were able to make contact with 78 percent of all their targets. And those they spoke to were overwhelmingly in favor of the merger, with well more than the mandatory three-quarters agreeing to the move. The phone-banking also helped the group identify members who’d died or moved away, and allowed them to whittle the combined roster down to a more manageable 350 or so. And for the many “rusty trowels”—members who hadn’t visited the lodge in years or even decades—the phone call offered a welcome invitation back into the fold. All of that was positive and, generally, expected.

Then there was the other side of the coin.

Reaching out to so many members, “You start seeing that there’s a lot of need out there,” says Williams, who is the lodge treasurer and oversees the group’s outreach committee. “There are so many people who need help. That really woke everybody up.”

The stories that poured in underscored that. The committee soon realized that the lodge was in a unique position to offer a lifeline to members and their families and to help them tap into a fraternal network of support. Their issues ran the gamut from small inconveniences to much more serious health and housing challenges. In one instance, an elderly member with dementia was living out of state and lacked proper health care, and his wife was helping care for her own mother elsewhere. In another, a lodge widow’s air conditioner had malfunctioned during a heat wave, and she needed cash to have it repaired. One conversation revealed that a past master had just returned home following surgery and needed in-home care until he recovered. In each case, the lodge was in a position to offer help, either directly or by connecting people to Masonic Outreach Services, through which professional case managers are assigned to fraternal family members to help get them the support they need, whether that’s a referral to in-home health care, placement in an assisted living facility, or a one-time cash payment. In recognition of the lodge’s work with its members, the Masonic Homes of California conferred to Oakland № 61 the 2024 Joe Jackson Award, named for the late San Diego–area Mason who helped develop the lodge outreach program. (Read about previous winners of the award here, here and here.)

The outreach effort had effects even beyond the assistance the lodge was able to provide to its members. Lodge leaders say the campaign in Oakland helped the group establish fraternal support as a bedrock of its identity at a time when members were thinking very consciously about how to create a distinct culture for Oakland № 61. That included ensuring the lodge was a meaningful community partner—which it accomplishes by issuing scholarships for local students and Masonic youth order members, as well as by fundraising to benefit nearby Claremont Middle School.

“We now have what I’d call an eight- or nine-prong approach” to outreach, Williams explains, only slightly exaggerating. Since merging, the lodge now devotes more space to MOS updates in its monthly Trestleboard, which it sends both physically and via email—a move requested by several elderly members. The group also voted to fund a lodge Lyft account, which any member can use in order to get a free ride to and from lodge meetings. “For elderly guys who can’t drive at night or have problems, this way they’re able to get to lodge, no big deal,” Williams says, adding that the lodge is considering expanding that program to include widows, members of the Eastern Star, and other Masonic groups. “In the end, if it’s $200 a month, that’s nothing to get people in the door and feel that they’re a part of this lodge,” he says. “That’s what we’re excited about.”

But the biggest result to come out of the effort was to instill a sense among members that Oakland № 61 can and should be a resource for its members, their families, and the community around it.

Says lodge master Cal Gilbert, “We look at those obligations we take as we pass through each of the degrees and we take them very seriously. So for us, this kind of outreach is, certainly, part of how we are able to walk the walk.”