Young Men’s Institute hopes for resurgence
The clean, crisp ads have been showing up in Catholic San Francisco and Catholic diocesan papers across the state.
“The YMI … Join the Brotherhood,” the ad proclaims, reminding readers of the 127 years that members of the Young Men’s Institute have been joined in service, faith and fraternity.
The group is making an all-out effort to boost its aging and declining membership by using all the modern communication tools to get its message in front of today’s Catholic men.
Besides the ads and public service announcements on Catholic radio stations, the YMI has a web site, an e-mail address and even a Facebook page, all designed to show that there’s still a place for the type of Catholic organization that has allowed tens of thousands of men to serve their church and their community over the years – and have fun doing it.
“In recent years we’ve found that many people, including clergy, don’t really know what the YMI does,” said Mike Amato, grand secretary of the YMI and president of one of its two San Francisco councils. “But we need to get our message out there and let people know we’re still here.”
On March 4, 1883, a half-dozen San Francisco men met in the parish hall of St. Joseph’s Church and formed the Young Men’s Institute, an organization that would provide a religious, fraternal and social anchor for generations of Catholic men.
A plaque commemorating the founding of YMI today is located at Notre Dame des Victoires Church at 566 Bush St., under a lamppost that was originally located at St. Joseph Church at 10th and Howard streets.
The YMI was founded less than 30 years after San Francisco’s second Committee of Vigilance had lynched, imprisoned or exiled more than two dozen people, most of them Irish. The Irish, said Ernest Seyd, a San Francisco merchant at the time, were the tools of “meddling politicians, Jesuits, demagogues and ballot-box stuffers.”
By 1880, the Irish made up a third of the nearly 250,000 people in San Francisco and had a strong political presence in the city. But they were still the laborers, ignored, at best, by the business and social leaders of the city.
Today, the YMI is struggling to connect with a new generation of Catholics at a time when fraternal organizations of all types are seeing their membership plummet.
The organization last year donated more than $100,000 to a variety of causes, including the education of seminarians, scholarships to Catholic schools and food boxes for charities and needy families. It sponsors youth sports teams, runs essay contests for Catholic school students and works with local parishes.
But despite the good works, it has been an uphill climb to convince Catholic men to join an organization that in their minds is forever linked to the past of their fathers and grandfathers.
“Times have changed,” Amato admitted. “When the YMI first started, many of its members were Irish immigrants. The YMI provided them with a social outlet, but also helped them with things like finding jobs and housing.”
With a motto of “Pro Deo, Pro Patria,” – For God, For Country – the YMI grew to include not only those immigrants, but also their native-born sons, grandsons and friends, regardless of nationality. By World War II, there were an estimated 25,000 members and between 200 and 300 local councils in California and beyond.
But as time passed, those immigrants became part of the larger community and didn’t need to depend on the services that church-based organizations could provide.
By 1966, the YMI’s membership had fallen to around 5,000 members and 57 councils in California, Indiana and Hawaii. Today, it’s about half that, Amato said. There are now four councils in the archdiocese, with about 500 members.
“You can blame some of it on TV,” Amato said with a laugh. “There are more forms of entertainment out there and more reasons to stay home. People aren’t as likely to get their entertainment from a church organization.”
It’s not a problem unique to the YMI. The Italian Catholic Federation, founded in San Francisco in 1924, has seen its membership fall from a peak of 30,000 to about 14,000 today.
At its national convention in Jacksonville, Fla., last October, the leadership of the National Council of Catholic Women warned that declining membership could force the organization to shut down in the next two years.
Other fraternal groups have seen similar declines. National membership in the Elks, for example, has fallen more than 40 percent since 1980, while Masonic lodges, which had 4 million members in the country in 1963, has seen that number drop to 1.6 million.
In his 2000 book “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Harvard Professor Robert Putnam found that they’re Americans are increasingly unwilling to join community organizations, whether they’re bowling leagues and the PTA or the Elks Lodge and the Jaycees.
But even if recruitment is a tough slog, for groups like the YMI, finding new members is a growing priority.
“As our demographic gets older, we’re focusing on recruiting younger members,” Amato said. “We had 100 new members last year, but lost more than that, including 60 to death.”
Catholic men between ages 45 and 60 are the YMI’s main target group. At Amato’s home council, which generally meets at St. Cecilia Church in San Francisco, the average age of the membership has steadily fallen in the past few years.
There are similar recruitment efforts going on at the other councils in the archdiocese, which meet at Notre Dame des Victoires Church in San Francisco, All Souls Church in South San Francisco and in San Rafael.
“We try and have events people want to be part of, whether it’s dinners, picnics, sports tournaments or even bocce ball,” Amato said. “We are trying to find activities that fit our niche.”
That sense of fraternity, combined with the chance to do charitable work alongside fellow Catholics, is an important selling point for the YMI.
“We’re starting to get some calls from people who have seen our ads and heard the public service announcements and we can refer them to their local councils,” Amato said.
Rebuilding the membership is a slow, but necessary process, he added.
“You know you’re going to be disappointed sometimes,” Amato said. “But for every three or four people we talk to, we can get one new member, so you have to keep going.”
By John Wildermuth
From March 19, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
