LCI Forward Update

There’s always room for a new goal. There are no small acts of service. But there are always new ways to think big about service.

Thinking Outside Your Town

In 2004, the Rocklin Lions in California decided they needed to step up their efforts in collecting eye glasses. Until then they had been happy if they collected 35 in a year.

But new club president Max Best decided they could do better. In addition to implementing an expanded drop-box program in their town, they also began contacting local lost and found departments for unclaimed glasses. After some success with that, they asked themselves, “Why limit ourselves to just our town?”

They began contacting the lost and found departments in every casino, hotel chain, police department, and college they could find across the country. They went from collecting 35 glasses per year to collecting between 30,000 and 40,000 per year, with about 25 percent of those collected locally and the remainder gathered from across the U.S.

Buoyed by the success of their new strategies, the club set a goal of collecting half a million eyeglasses. By early 2019, they had collected 504,548.

While this may not be the most any club has collected, this is an example of one club deciding that “good” was actually not good enough. They challenged themselves to think creatively to find new sources for their program, enhancing their service impact.

Share Your Story

Has your club found innovative ways to improve membership value and increase membership, reshaped public opinion and visibility, or enhanced their service impact in a notable way? Tell us at magazine@lionmagzine.org.