EXCHANGE: Service clubs have trouble getting new members

CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. (AP) - When John Jung first joined the Woodstock Lions Club in the early 1990s, the group had about 50 members.

Now Jung is president of the group that consists of about 10 members, four or five of whom show up to the meetings on average, he said.

At 67 years old, Jung said he’s one of the younger members in the club, and they’ve been losing members over the last few years who have died or retired. Recruiting new members is hard because people don’t seem to have the time for service anymore in their busy schedules, he said.

“We’ve tried everything,” Jung said. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Other service clubs, including the Crystal Lake Lions Club, McHenry Kiwanis Club and Woodstock Kiwanis Club, also have struggled to grow membership in recent years.

Although the 52-member Crystal Lake Lions Club is significantly larger than the Woodstock Lions Club, Crystal Lake Lions member Randy Funk said it hasn’t grown its membership over the past five years.

“People don’t find enough time to go out and do this kind of work, which is so important, volunteer work,” Funk said. “It does take your time to do it, and money and energy. I just think people need to start doing it more. It’s a problem.”

Funk said strong community support helps sustain the club. Recently, the club sold more than 550 tickets for its annual steak fry fundraiser that Funk said he expected to raise more than $20,000.

“That’s why our club does succeed, is we do have a bunch of people who are not members, but are like family members,” Funk said, and they come out to fundraising events.

Part of the mission of Lions Clubs nationally is to help the blind and hearing impaired, Funk said, and any type of service club helps to provide free services to the community that people in need otherwise might have not been able to get.

Jung said there would be more people going without a pair of glasses and more children sitting in school not being able to read the board without the extra help.

“Without (service clubs), I think the community would be hurting more,” Jung said, adding the lack of members means there are fewer people to raise funds and less money to pass around in the community.

Horizons for the Blind, a nonprofit based in Crystal Lake that works to increase accessibility to consumer products and services for the blind or visually impaired, is one of the groups that’s benefited from the work of the Crystal Lake Lions Club.

Executive Director Camille Caffarelli said it’s important for people to donate their money and time to nonprofits, and that can be done through service organizations.

“I think as human beings, we have a responsibility to give back to society,” Caffarelli said. “And I think those organizations are means allowing that to happen.”

To gain more members, the McHenry Kiwanis Club is in the middle of a membership drive to add to its 42 members. Internationally, the club’s mission is to help children.

McHenry Kiwanis Club President Julianne Baron said the group has been sustaining its “small membership,” and she hopes to add members by knocking on doors.

Baron said membership is low in service clubs because people don’t think they have the time.

“If you’re passionate about doing this for the kids and the community, you make time,” Baron said.

One club that has recently grown is the Woodstock Kiwanis Club, which was chartered in May and now has about 15 members, President Kevin Dwyer said. He said the former Woodstock Kiwanis Club died out about seven years ago, after it had been in the community for more than 50 years.

Dwyer said he’s not sure why the former club died out, but he hopes the energetic and young members, with an average age of about 40, will keep the newly formed club and the spirit of service going in the community.

“When people start getting involved, and they start showing passion in helping the community out and really start volunteering, that’s when you start seeing the community come alive,” Dwyer said.

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Source: The (Crystal Lake) Northwest Herald, https://bit.ly/1PDAubb

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Information from: The Northwest Herald, https://www.nwherald.com