Patches As Motivators
Posted in Patch Collecting by John E. Pannell on February 21st, 2007 at 6:34 am In a perfect world the Order of the Arrow and its ceremonies inculcate the virtues of the Order upon its members. Brothers willingly serve as elangomats. The attend service projects and give their service selflessly. They eagerly seek more knowledge and seal their membership in the Brotherhood. They look forward to attending lodge events and sign up for them as soon as registration is opened.
However we do not live in a perfect world so lodges have come up with incentives to increase various types of participation within the lodge. One of most commonly used incentives is a patch.
I really don’t mean to pick on the folks in Coosa lodge, but they are a large lodge and news of their patches regularly comes to me. Besides they have a neat idea here. For the last several years, the lodge has issued an “Events Pass” patch for those members who pre-pay for that year’s lodge events.
The 2001 Event Pass, listed in Blue Book as R2 is a highly collectible and desired issue among collectors in this lodge.
Many lodges have trouble recruiting sufficient elangomats for their Ordeals. It is a major commitment for a brother to serve as an elangomat, effectively undertaking the tests of the Ordeal once again.
My own lodge, Tsoiotsi Tsogalii, has come up with a three piece patch set to encourage brothers to serve as an elangomat. A brother gets one piece each time he serves. Since they are awarded in sequence, the upper left piece is the most common and the bottom the rarest. Complete sets are rare and coveted by some local collectors.
Another behavior lodges tend to encourage with patches is “Brotherhood conversion”, getting their Ordeal members to seal their membership by becoming Brotherhood members.
Even thought it is officially frowned upon, many lodges still issue Ordeal, Brotherhood and Vigil flaps. Others go just a bit further and issue a special flap to encourage Brotherhood conversion. The flap pictured to the left from Ajapeu 33 is an example of this.
My own lodge takes this a step further and ties Brotherhood conversion in with the extended elangomat program. The flap pictured to the left is issued to brothers who have previously served as elangomats and have had a significant percentage of their clan become Brotherhood members. Initially this was set at 60% but very few members earned the flap, so the percentage has seen been lowered to a more attainable level.
Patches used to raise funds kind of fit in this category, too. In this case the patch is issued to encourage a significant financial donation. 
There’s a plethora of these: campership fundraisers; fundraisers for service projects; fundraisers for national event contingents; etc…
Even though it is not recognized by the BSA, and strongly discouraged if not outright prohibited, some lodges have sold life memberships. This has given rise to some rather interesting issues. One of my favorites, for its classic design, is the bullion issued by Cuyahoga lodge pictured here.
Some lodges have gotten around the life membership issue by stipulating this membership is valid only as long as the brother is a registered member in the BSA council the lodge is attached to. Others, like my own lodge issue “extended membership” patches, a form of limited life membership with similar restrictions.
There is one last basic method in which patches are used to encourage lodge participation: issuing “cool” patches. Some lodges have made extraordinary efforts to issue very artistic and well-executed patch design. While not unique to any one area, some of the Florida lodges seem to excel at this.
The patches tend to be topical in nature with a common theme for the program or calendar year. One of the more unusual themes was the architecture theme used by Tipisa lodge in 2004-2005. That year’s jacket patch, featuring the Cathedral of Notre Dame, is pictured.
There are many other ways patches have been used to motivate and encourage lodge participation. Feel free to share your favorites here.
Hi John - nice cross section of ‘motivational patches’ you’ve covered here!
Since my blog deals with patches - although not exclusively - I just recently covered the flip side of your post here, with a three-part post, on why I REactivated my OA membership as an adult, ten years ago. Surprisingly enough - it was NOT about the patches!
Needless to say, I DO like patches - but it wasn’t even a consideration when I rejoined Scouting and the OA back in ‘96. I’d actually had an experience - through my service in the church on the Oglala-Lakota (Sioux) Reservation in SD - that helped me to FINALLY appreciate the American Indian culture & traditions that the OA is sworn to “observe & preserve.” With this better appreciation & knowledge, I rejoined the OA, eager to share with brothers this knowledge, as it was the most intimidating element of the OA for me to grasp when I was a youth. I thought, that if I could help others understand it a bit better, then their OA experience would be richer for it, and THEN THEIR SERVICE WOULD INCREASE (even as my own has these past ten years) - whether or NOT a patch was ALSO involved.
I didn’t get the collecting bug, until late 1998, when I was a DE in Tri-State Area Council, and while I’ve had a LOT of fun with it, it has NEVER been my primary concern with, nor a motivation to ‘do something’ for, the OA Lodge. One either has a internal drive for service, or you don’t, and a patch (I don’t believe) will alter that. You might perform the service for the SAKE of a patch, but you’ll hardly give the same effort, as one who is truly motivated to serve. If you’re an ACTIVE… OA member (and ALL that that word entails), a patch will always be “icing on the cake,” and will never be confused for the MAIN COURSE itself.
Bob McCanless
Pittsburgh
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An early draft of this post mentioned that most OA brothers are not patch collectors. I was going to mention that the program is a better motivator than some piece of embroidered cloth.
But since this is a blog primarily about patches, I thought I’d leave that matter to other writers and stick to one topic.
…..and then sometimes these motivators go to far in their restrictions giving the incentive to the less than scrupulous another reason to fake an issue.
From the 1950’s into the 1980’s, Comanche Lodge 254 issued a round event patch for its Annual Pilgrimage and Fellowship. The pocket patches themselves went unchanged for many years but as an incentive to attend non-ordeal events, the lodge issued a small embroidered red arrow at each event to attach to the patch.
As a result, senior lodge adults eventually had the patch ringed with feathers and had trailers hanging down like Sioux feather bonnets. Like the old chiefs had many feathers, and old solidiers have many hash marks, the old lodge brothers had the staus of many feathers on their patch. And it worked to keep attendence up, some of those guys didn’t want to miss an opportunity to add a feather.
For Louisiana collectors, the event patches with many feathers are highly sought-after and command a premium price. A single tiny feather can cost as much as the event patch itself.
Another spin on this, beyond the patch, are totem beads. The lodge that I came up through, Langundowi 46, used to give out totem beads that could be worn on a leather lace (or thin lanyard, etc.) for participation in activities. If you attended the banquet you got a bead, if you helped with brotherhood conversion you got an eagle claw, if you were an elangomat you got a bear claw (all out of plastic). Conclave or work weekend participation got you a flat disc bead. Due to logistics it was eventually discontinued but it certainly was a visible methodology for encouraging attendance, participation and motivation.