ASK THE MASTER

Q. What happened to the “Action Grange” program?

A. According to the National Master Ed Luttrell, every Grange is an Action Grange—and every Grange is a “regular” Grange. The Action Grange program began in 1999, the result of a strategic planning task force of the National Grange. Granges whose members attended Action Grange training weekends were permitted to experiment with different types of meeting formats to determine which might work better for them.

After several years, changes were adopted into the National Grange Digest of Laws as “Temporary Authorization for Action/Visioning Grange Initiates.” These changes included optional names for officers (President, Vice President, Program Director), “Community” Granges instead of Subordinate, and an alternative Opening & Closing ceremony and “Welcoming Ceremony” that could be used instead of the blue Manual and Obligation booklet.

In 2005 these temporary authorizations were officially adopted and inserted in the Digest as permanent options available to all Granges. At this point the Action Grange program was terminated since every Grange is permitted to use the new terms and ceremonies. Therefore all Granges across the country are once again on the same basis. Although we may use different officer names or different opening ceremonies, we are all the Grange without special privileges or designations for some.