Knights of Columbus Launches Online Membership

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The Knights of Columbus has launched a New York statewide membership initiative that allows Catholic men to join online. It began March 2 and is expected to go nationwide in the summer.

Organizers say online membership offers a unique digital experience that fulfills the call to respond to the needs of the Church while strengthening the faith and character of future generations of Catholic men.

“It is a very important step in the way of reaching today’s young men where they are,” Michele Nuzzo-Naglieri, a spokeswoman for the Knights of Columbus Supreme Council, told CNY by email March 27.

“Online membership is a great and quick vehicle for men to get to know the Knights of Columbus—to access rich formative materials, and to prepare themselves to join a council when the time is right for them,” Ms. Nuzzo-Naglieri said.

She said that in the short term the Knights hope to extend their reach and make available the benefits of membership to a younger and more transient generation of Catholic men. In the long term, she noted, the Knights hope to see councils throughout the United States and Canada richly blessed with a steady stream of new members transitioning from online membership, and ready to serve their parishes and communities. The membership site is: kofc.org/joinus.

Matt St. John, the online membership coordinator, said, “The Knights of Columbus has always brought Catholic men together in community and fraternity to help strengthen each other, our families, our parishes and our communities. The work that we do as an organization is needed now more than ever.”

If the Knights are going to keep making the difference their members have made for more than 130 years, St. John said, they need more men to join. The hope, he added, is that the initiative will allow the organization to reach out to a new audience as well as provide “an alternative first step for men who may have considered joining in the past, and to begin them on their journey toward committed, lifelong and ideally council-based membership in the Knights of Columbus.”

Organizers said that men who join the Knights of Columbus online get a subscription to Columbia magazine, the organization’s flagship publication; access to the Knights’ online members’ portal (Knights.net), where they will receive resources to help them lead with faith, protect their families, serve others and defend their values; access to the organization’s fraternal benefits program; the opportunity to purchase the Knights’ insurance and retirement plans for themselves and their immediate family; and a connection into its fraternal and charitable network, including the opportunity to participate in local events, and the option of transferring into a local council.

Organizers say the online benefits are nearly identical to the council-based benefits. The two notable exceptions are the online members’ portal, which for the moment is available only to online members, and the enriching experience of council life, to which online members can transfer at any time.

The Knights of Columbus is headquartered in New Haven, Conn.