We all know the Roaring Twenties. But the Roaring late 1800s?  Ccheck out the table of membership groups and how many cracked 1% of the U.S. pop as members and the real roar happened 120+ years ago.

I don’t know if this list is exhaustive or how “membership” was defined, but it’s a fascinating snapshot of what once commanded scale. A few things stand out:

• The roaring decades were 1870s–1920s. That’s when most new associations formed and reached peak membership.

• Fraternal orders dominated. Odd Fellows, Masons, Elks, Moose, Pythias, Eagles, Woodmen — every town had a lodge.

• Temperance ran hot, then fizzled. It reinvented itself multiple times but never endured.

• Religion and service stuck. YMCA, Red Cross, Knights of Columbus, missionary unions. Faith + service proved the most durable combo.

• Labor followed the economy. Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO, farm alliances. Their surges map perfectly to industrial and agricultural upheaval.

• Advocacy came in waves. Abolition, suffrage, Townsend pensions, Right to Life, MADD, Greenpeace, Christian Coalition. Big when the issue was hot, smaller after.

• Veterans’ groups pulsed with war. GAR, American Legion, VFW. Each tethered to a war cohort.

• Youth/service filled a civic niche. YMCA youth work expanded into Scouts, PTAs, women’s auxiliaries.

• Mass membership is done. Post-1960s, only a handful of entrants cracked the 1% club. Fragmentation rules.

• Leisure had its moments. NRA, AAA, and, allegedly, the Bowling Congress.

And yes, about bowling: I have to call BS on the American Bowling Congress maintaining 1% of the U.S. population since the 1930s. Maybe some enterprising Agitator reader will prove me wrong. I do remember when bowling aired on one of the three over-the-air channels, and seemingly all parents were in a league while kids sat in smoke-filled alleys in the mostly unattended “kid room.” Those days are long gone.

So what’s the fundraising lesson?

• Don’t chase mass. The golden era of broad-based is more than 120 years gone.

• Don’t chase membership with faux membership.  The number of groups with the latter has exploded with so called “best practice’ garbage and spawned an arms race of “member renewal packages” timed not to anniversary or any normal expectation of when a renewal should go out but instead driven by the false God of “ask more=make more”.

• Build identity, not just supporter lists. The groups that lasted weren’t just causes, they were who people were.

• Rituals and roles matter. Enduring groups had visible signals (uniforms, titles, posts, rituals).

Kevin