Elks Magazine and Official Publications: What Members Read

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks has maintained a formal publication record stretching back more than a century, giving members a consistent channel for news, policy updates, and fraternal culture. Elks Magazine remains the flagship, landing in the mailboxes of eligible members across the country's roughly 1,900 active lodges. Understanding what the Order publishes — and how those publications function inside lodge life — clarifies a dimension of membership that dues schedules and ceremony descriptions rarely capture.

Definition and scope

Elks Magazine is the official periodical of the BPOE, published by the Elks National Memorial and Publication Commission. It reaches members six times per year and covers a deliberate mix of fraternal news, civic affairs, and general-interest features. The magazine is not a newsletter in the thin, photocopy-on-a-Tuesday sense — it carries full editorial production, photography, and a national advertising footprint that has historically helped offset publication costs.

Beyond the magazine itself, the Grand Lodge produces a parallel stream of official documents: the Grand Lodge Bulletin, convention proceedings, and the annual Report of the Grand Exalted Ruler. These are procedural and administrative in nature, circulated primarily to lodge officers and delegates rather than the general membership. A member who attends the Elks Grand Lodge Convention will encounter these materials firsthand; everyone else typically sees summaries filtered through their lodge's own communications.

The scope of what the Order formally publishes also extends to program-specific materials — brochures and guides supporting the Elks National Foundation, scholarship documentation for initiatives like the Most Valuable Student Award, and materials tied to youth programs including the Hoop Shoot Contest. These are functionally separate from Elks Magazine but fall under the same institutional publishing umbrella.

How it works

Subscription to Elks Magazine is automatic for members in good standing — it is bundled into the membership structure rather than sold separately. The publication address follows the member record maintained at the national level, which means address changes need to go through the lodge or directly to the national office to keep delivery current.

Editorial content flows through a staff based in Chicago, where the Elks national headquarters operates. The magazine covers four broad content categories:

  1. Fraternal news — Grand Lodge announcements, convention highlights, and updates on national officers and policy decisions.
  2. Charitable program coverage — Features on scholarship recipients, veterans program outcomes, and drug awareness initiatives tied to the Elks Drug Awareness Program.
  3. Civic and general interest — Articles that would not be out of place in a mainstream American general-interest magazine: history, profiles, community stories.
  4. Lodge recognition — Awards, milestones, and spotlights on individual lodges, giving local units a moment of national visibility.

The Grand Lodge Bulletin, by contrast, operates on a need-to-publish basis rather than a fixed schedule. It functions more like an official gazette — when the Grand Lodge issues a ruling, announces a policy change, or needs to communicate urgent procedural information to lodge officers, the Bulletin is the formal vehicle. It is less a publication members read for pleasure and more a document they consult for compliance.

Common scenarios

A new member joining a lodge after reading through membership requirements and completing the application process will receive Elks Magazine without having to request it. That first issue often serves as an orientation of sorts — showing the breadth of what the Order does nationally, which lodge-level orientation rarely has time to cover.

Lodge officers interact with the publication ecosystem differently than rank-and-file members. An Exalted Ruler, for instance, monitors the Grand Lodge Bulletin for procedural updates that affect how rituals, elections, or finances must be conducted. The contrast is meaningful: one publication is a benefit of membership, the other is an operational tool.

Members relocating to a new area and searching the lodge locator for a new home lodge sometimes use back issues of Elks Magazine to understand regional program activity — a useful but informal research method that the publication's breadth makes possible.

Decision boundaries

The clearest line to draw is between Elks Magazine as a membership publication and local lodge newsletters as lodge-level communications. The national magazine operates under editorial standards set by the Publication Commission; local newsletters are produced independently by individual lodges with no standardized format, frequency, or editorial oversight from the national organization. Quality and regularity vary considerably from lodge to lodge.

A second boundary worth noting: Elks Magazine is not a peer-reviewed or independently audited publication. Its charitable coverage and statistical claims about program reach reflect data provided by the national organization. Readers looking for independent verification of figures — say, the total scholarship dollars distributed through a given program year — would need to consult the Elks National Foundation directly or review Grand Lodge convention proceedings, where financial reports are formally presented.

For members exploring the full picture of what Elk membership involves — history, structure, and the culture that publications like the magazine reflect — the main overview provides the broader context that individual publication pages can't fully carry alone. The magazine, ultimately, is one artifact of an organization whose founding and growth timeline stretch across more than 150 years of American civic life.

References

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