Fraternal organizations can be organized around a shared ethnic background, religion, occupation, geographical region or other basis and are formed to support the common interests of the group.  Early fraternal organizations include medieval guilds and the Freemasons (which began as a guild).  Mutual Aid Societies are similar to fraternal organizations but typically are formed to enable the better off members assist the less fortunate.  Mutual aid organizations were stronger in the United States before the rise of the welfare state.

Many of the traditional tasks performed by fraternal and mutual aid societies have been absorbed by government, unions, and non-profit organizations.  This early form still exists in some powerful examples.

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is a Fortune 500 financial services organization with dual corporate headquarters based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Appleton, Wisconsin. Thrivent Financial and its subsidiaries offer financial products and services including life insurance, annuities, mutual funds, disability income insurance, bank products and more to its nearly 3 million members.  Its members are divided into 1,400 chapters which encourage its members to work together on service projects such as Habitat for Humanity builds.

Kiwanis International is an organization of service clubs headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana and made up of approximately 8,000 clubs in 96 countries with over 260,000 adult members. Members of Kiwanis place special emphasis on service to children and youth, both through international initiatives intended to improve the quality of life of children around the world, and through their Service Leadership Programs, made up of about 7,000 youth clubs with about 320,000 youth members.

Rotary International is an organization of service clubs known as Rotary Clubs located all over the world. There are more than 32,000 clubs in more than 200 countries, and there are over 1.2 million members world-wide. The members of Rotary Clubs are known as Rotarians. The stated purpose of the organization is to bring together business and professional leaders from a variety of industries to provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world. Members usually meet weekly for breakfast, lunch or dinner, which are a social event as well as an opportunity to organize work on their service goals.

Business Model:

Fraternal and Mutual Aid Societies are not for profit and instead exist to aid the members in some common goal, often as a way to organize service for the less fortunate.  They typically rely on donations of time and money from their members.

Assumptions:

1. There is still a place for these kinds of organizations in modern society.  They have seen steep decline over the last 100 years and many of there functions have been picked up by government and non-profits.
2. There is a common goal uniting the members.

• Potential  of new alliances to create risk pooling or collective purchasing/action
• Though in decline over the last 100 years, fraternal and mutual aid societies still play an important organizing role for their members.
• A history of being very powerful and important hints at the potential for a new role for these groups.