Annual Membership Enrollment Booklet

Date / Period
1920s
Place
Toronto
Object Type
Books, Guides and Manuals
Credit
Canadian Red Cross
Topics
Fundraising and Communications

Membership drives were a common early- to mid-twentieth century fundraising technique for voluntary and charitable organizations. This Canadian Red Cross membership enrollment booklet from the 1920s is one example. It also highlights new challenges facing the society in that period.

The society offered two types of membership in the 1920s: a one-year long “annual” membership, for the donation of $1.00, or a “life” membership that never needed to be renewed, for a donation of $25.00. The Bank of Canada’s online Inflation Calculator indicates that $1.00 in 1920 is the equivalent of $11.42 in 2016 Canadian dollars: clearly more than pocket change, but within the means of most citizens. The $25.00 donation of 1920, on the other hand, represents the more substantial equivalent commitment of $285.49 in 2016 dollars.

The Canadian Red Cross had official “members” as early as its 1896 founding, and again after its 1909 reorganization, but the criteria for member status are unknown. By the time of the First World War (1914-18), the society linked membership to a minimum donation of $1.00. This would continue to be the case through to at least the 1940s.

"Red Cross leaders now had to work harder to raise the money needed to support their activities."

During the 1920s the society was in transition from being a wartime-only organization to a peacetime one as well. Peacetime and public health work lacked the powerful appeal of wartime patriotism, so Red Cross leaders now had to work harder to raise the money needed to support their activities.  

During the 1920s and 1930s the Red Cross did not hold annual, nationally-coordinated appeals for donations in the way that it would later do. Instead, it relied on local fundraising efforts and province-wide membership appeals. The society began to partner with certain government departments in this period, but received very little financial support outside of what it raised for itself. 

This meant that each $1.00 donation dramatically increased the society’s ability to help the vulnerable. Today, individual donations, no matter how small, continue to make a vital contribution to the work of the Red Cross at home and abroad.

Annual Membership Enrollment Booklet

Canadian Red Cross membership canvasser’s booklet (blank), ca. 1920s
Canadian Red Cross membership canvasser’s booklet (blank), ca. 1920s
Detachable membership card inside canvasser’s enrollment booklet, ca. 1920s
Detachable membership card inside canvasser’s enrollment booklet, ca. 1920s

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