[ryandrake]

Unfortunately, these clubs sometimes (knowingly or unknowingly) sabotage themselves when it comes to attracting young members.

A lot of these organizations, you go there to share an interest, and you walk in and they're not really talking about their interest. To be blunt: a lot of them are just a bunch of old men griping about old-man things, making old-man jokes that were acceptable in the '80s, bringing up (ahem) old-man politics... This kind of stuff is kryptonite to a 25 year old who wants to join your club.

This is pretty much exactly what the local HAM radio org was in the place I used to live. I went to one meeting and noped out of there pretty quickly.

[Broken_Hippo]

Some of the organizations mentioned have never welcomed me - the first hurdle to some of these is simply being female. Freemasons only accept men IIRC. Knights of Columbus? Catholic. Oddfellows acceptance really depends on the individual lodge, despite what the literature says. These organizations aren't always in smaller areas either, so you aren't joining if you are in a small town an hour's drive from the nearest meeting place.

[rickydroll]

Our astronomy club is the same way. Except it's a bunch of people standing around in the dark, looking at things through telescopes. And then, when everybody's seeing the object, we move on to the next one. We have a few folks active in things like astrophotography, variable star observing, and tracking carbon stars, but these are pretty obscure corners that it takes a newbie time to warm up to.