I hate to admit it but this has been my experience exactly within my lodge and the ones in my area I have visited. There are some Sunday morning meetings where they usually bring in someone to discuss on some topic but to date it usually revolves around medical issues or religious propoganda.
Not long ago there was the same old topic of how to raise awareness brought up and a group formed to come up with ideas. When they presented their ideas I was amazed at the lack of "out of the box" thinking that had gone into their ideas. One was to pick an elderly person and clean their home, while this is an honorable thing to do it ranks low on attracting new members, the other was to place flags at the grave of vets, doesn't the VA/VFW/AL already do this? I had mentioned another idea to the committee before the meeting about something I was working on that is a national initative and involves partnering with Wal-Mart and a large non-profit foundation. The person making the presentation when he saw their ideas wasn't meeting well with the brothers, mentioned what I was working on as their idea. He got caught when he was questioned in more depth about it and I had to stand up and take over their presentation.
