What do you look for in a Veterans' organization? Do the VFW or American Legion meet your demands?

I talked to the VFW about this. The majority of them arre Vietnam vets now. They said that they went through the same thing with the WWII vets when they got home from Vietnam. The walls are decorated with articles that are unknown or not relatable to today's vets. Today's vets are extremely social media saavy. The VFW is not known for being in touch with today's technological advances. Adapt and Evolve or pay the penalty. RallyPoint is more fitting for today's veterans instead of the VFW.

Sounds right, they did the same to we Vietnam vets, because they called it a conflict not a war, Now I belong to the VFW, DAV, Veterans Blind, all life membership, was in the American Legion, But drop out of that one.

I am a member of the VFW, DAV and Legion. I work for the VFW, Dept. of MA. I have seen a wide spectrum of solutions and failures. The truth is without younger generation veterans the organizations will slowly loose one of their main strength, numbers. Congress listens to numbers, point blank.

Any of you who are members, unless your family was already involved, I bet it took you ten years give or take to join. I personally fell into a VFW by accident. I joined after a year of going and visiting. I didn't want to join something I didn't have time to commit to. Once I was in I loved the comradeship and learning how the organization worked. Then again I didn't have a family or kids.

I feel in order to attract newer generation conflict veterans we need to offer something of interest to them. It may be different in the north, south, east or west as well as urban vs. rural. Just keep trying until something "clicks". The VFW has partnered with the SVA (Student Veterans of America). We have taken student veterans to a Celtics game, or hockey games, invited them to meet at our post. You have to be creative.

The one sentence that an organization that wants to attract young members must NEVER us is "that's the way we always did it". How about we do it this way because .... show us the reason and we may just understand and be able to work a out compromise. One thing you don't want to do is alienate your pre Gulf War members. Vietnam veterans have been alienated enough.