A lodge’s history is crucial to its future, but history comes with age and when those years are accompanied with decay, it can become difficult to see that future as bright. It’s a story that is all too real for the Brothers of Hialeah-Opa-Locka Lodge No. 391. Recently, our worst fear was realized when our already aging roof began to leak water into the lodge room, following Hurricane Irma.
Faced with dwindling finances and the seemingly impossible task of repairing our roof before it became too late, we not only increased membership dues and cut expenditures drastically, but also turned to one brother’s talents to raise money and see our roof fixed.
It turns out that my passion for photography led to a fundraising idea, where we would offer lodges across our district professional photography services in the form of masonic portraits for their newly elected officer lines, in exchange for a donation to our building fund.
The fundraiser quickly garnered support from the district and multiple lodges signed up to have their officer lines photographed during their upcoming installations. The district wide photo sessions were a tremendous success and not only helped us collect funds to fix our roof, but helped us do it sooner rather than later to avoid a potential disaster with the rainy season right around the corner.
