CONNECT is an acronym for the OA’s overall initiative to highlight key categories and best practices for member retention. It has been developed by the National Order of the Arrow Growth & Retention Committee and helps to create a further sense of belonging and showcase member success stories at the lodge, section, regional, and national level.

C - Cultivate — Develop youth leaders to inspire and grow your lodge.

O - Opportunity — Offer multiple events with opportunities to be involved in planning and execution.

N - New Members — Welcome all new members. Celebrate them and encourage belonging.

N - Novel Approaches — Broaden your communication strategies, create new activities and events, restructure lodge operations, and add value to your lodge program.

E - Engage — Engage members along the membership journey with multiple touch points to sustain their interest.

C - Core — Focus on our purpose and core values of Brotherhood, Cheerfulness, and Service.

T - Training — Properly train youth leaders and adult advisers by further training youth leadership through adviser mentorship, hosting workshops at dedicated training events, National Leadership Seminar, or sessions at the National Order of the Arrow Conference.

CONNECT is an overarching initiative and framework that can be utilized at the lodge, section, regional, and national levels to grow and recognize our membership by highlighting successful strategies and by helping to develop areas of growth.

Videos, resources, FAQ’s, and future developments will be placed on this webpage for use and promotion.

CONNECT can be utilized to assess strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement and develop goals to follow (E.g C - Cultivate, strength: we create a culture of belonging for our new members, weakness: we focus less on our current membership, areas of improvement: create events and activities for our current membership). Additionally you can feature members at the lodge level and promote national initiatives related to CONNECT and overall member retention to further foster a community of belonging.

Member retention is as important as inducting new members to sustain our program. We can add several touch points along the membership journey by celebrating new members, communicating in a personalized way throughout the Induction, offering all members an opportunity to contribute, and recognizing members for their hard work and achievements. By utilizing and growing in multiple aspects of CONNECT we further engage all members of our Order in our united mission of brotherhood, cheerfulness, and service.

CONNECT was developed by analyzing, interviewing, and polling high performing lodges over multiple years and was created as an initiative to further create a sense of belonging and growth.