The Membership Development Support Fund was created to provide resources at the Monthly Meeting level for projects to increase and strengthen membership. A striking finding is that the most effective form of outreach is a personal invitation to meeting for worship from a Friend who knows the potential attender.
First steps can be simple.
Friends attract new attenders when they speak about their faith and testimonies with non-Friends in their daily lives, and show real interest in the spiritual lives of others. Grants for basic needs such as Meeting signs, telephones and answering machines, phone book listings and newspaper advertising have in general not brought an influx of visitors saying they came because they saw the sign, or the ad in the paper or phone book. These projects raise the Meeting's profile in the community, and in combination with other forces may draw new attenders far into the future. Outreach that shows results in the short term is often very particular to a Meeting and its surrounding community. Frankford Meeting in Philadelphia identified neighborhood children and young families from the Meeting's school as potential new members.