Every second and fourth Friday of the month at 7 a.m., about six Success Exchange Breakfast Club members gather around a collection of square tables pushed together in a back room of Alexander’s restaurant in the Hotel Fort Des Moines. They drink coffee, eat made-to-order omelets and discuss anything from current events to reality television shows and cosmetic surgery. A conversation about getting together for an Iowa Cubs game briefly interrupts the casual talk.

Occasionally a speaker, anyone from a pilot to the development director of Habitat for Humanity, will attend to give a presentation about his or her profession. For the most part, however, the hour meeting is unstructured, which those involved say they value. Yet in recent years, the club’s membership has dwindled from 25 to 10.

“We would love to expand,” said club member Bobbie Bishop. “We’ve had people come and go, but we’ve had about the same 10 members for quite some time.”

Across town, at Bennigan’s on Merle Hay Road, around 25 members of Business Network International’s Des Moines chapter gather for their weekly meeting. Throughout the week, 10 other BNI chapters in the Des Moines area meet for breakfast or lunch as well, all going through the same 17 steps in a banquet room off a restaurant.

After members are seated, attendance taken and brief introductory remarks are made from the chapter president, members take turns giving a 60-second promotional spiel about their business, including what would be a good referral for them and ending with a slogan. Then a speaker from within the group (never a guest speaker) stands up to give a 10-minute presentation about his or her business. At the end, each member stands up again to give either a referral to someone or a testimonial about another member’s service or BNI’s results.

“A lot of people have been to breakfast clubs that are social chitchat clubs, and very few referrals are actually passed,” said David Elliott, executive director of BNI’s Iowa chapters, “In our groups, we’re there for a reason. We’re there to develop relationships and pass referrals.”

BNI’s rapid growth and other local clubs’ declining numbers suggest that many business people are interested in hard-working networking clubs rather than social groups. The interest in more structured, goal-driven organizations show that many rely on networking to build their client bases and are willing to pay more – up to $295 a year to belong to a BNI chapter, which does not include breakfast – to see tangible results.

Dana Kiene, an adviser with Waddell & Reed Financial Services, left his Alliance One lunch club to join a BNI chapter when he saw how organized BNI was and how it could help build his career.

“I was in the midst of another networking group that was lacking organization and hierarchy,” Kiene said. “BNI is very structured, and in a business group you need that. The old networking group became too social and lost focus of passing referrals.”

“If [a networking club] is not structured,” said Elliott, “then it’s like ship without a rudder: It doesn’t go anywhere. If it’s structured, it’s going to accomplish something.”

Kiene estimated that 30 to 40 percent of his business this year has come through BNI referrals, and that number is probably conservative. “I’ve tried advertisements,” he said, “but for the costs, I don’t think you can find a better advertisement than BNI.”

A referral, said Elliott, does not mean mentioning a possible contact. It means that other members have talked to someone about a member’s service and have passed on their business card. BNI tracks the number of referrals by having each member write his or her referrals on a slip of paper. Clubs often average around 50 referrals a month, and some reach up to 100.

The benefits of working through an international organization, Elliott said, is that the group already has a structure in place based on research that shows the most effective networking strategies. For example, he said, when a club switched from having meetings once a week to twice a month, it discovered that members went from passing 100 referrals a month to 30.

“If you meet people on a weekly basis,” said Elliott, “you develop relationships and learn about each other quicker.” When members cannot attend a particular meeting, BNI encourages them to find a substitute for that meeting.

All new members also go through training with Elliott, who teaches them networking techniques such as how to give a good promotional spiel, and chapters receive BNI books on networking techniques.

Jeff Ellis, member of the Xcel Breakfast Club, has seen a few of his club’s members leave for BNI affiliates. To counteract a decline from 25 to 15 members, Xcel has become more active in recruiting and providing networking opportunities. At its meetings (first and third Thursday of the month in a Hy-Vee conference room), the club has started having members give a 30-second spiel followed by a member or guest speaker who gives a 15- to 20-minute presentation. Xcel also is hosting a speed-networking program, much like speed dating, and a barbecue open to visitors.

The club’s biggest challenge, said Ellis, is not just to find members, but find members who are committed to attending every meeting. But with new energetic leadership from a core group, he believes the numbers will rise again. “Our goal for this year,” he said, “is 50 percent growth in six months and 100 percent growth this year.”

Many local clubs agree that although membership rosters may be down now, it’s just a cycle that clubs go through.

“It comes and goes,” said Michael Moller, who helped start Success Exchange Breakfast Club 21 years ago, “It’s just a matter of us deciding that we need to get going on it. We’ll get back up to 15 people, but don’t want to get any bigger than that.”

Others, such as BRASS Breakfast Club, are considering merging with other area clubs, which would not only boost membership but their budgets as well.

Not all social breakfast clubs are suffering. However, those that are doing well tend to be more structured.

Steve Vaught, secretary of the Breakfast Club Inc. and a member for 15 years, said that though the club has struggled in the past to find younger and more long-term active members, it is experiencing some stability now, with more than 20 of the club’s 30 members showing up for each meeting.

It’s not uncommon, however, to have a couple people occasionally show up, wait until they make their presentation, then drop out of the club, he said.

Although members take turns giving 20- to 30-minute presentations about their business, or bring in a guest speaker, “the main thrust is not business and business leads,” Vaught said. “I think it’s to get to know other business people in the community in more of a social, non-threatening business atmosphere.”

“If your main thrust is to make business contacts, probably our breakfast club is not what you’re looking for.”

Mary Dunbar, a longtime member of Consortium Breakfast Club, an all-women’s reciprocity and social club, says her group is also doing well, even though it has become less focused on reciprocity in the past couple of years. The club recently has had enough money in its budget to start supporting younger women through scholarships.

“You frequently find deeper friendships are made within the breakfast club,” she said. “Probably half a dozen of the original founding members are still members.”

But she has noticed that membership can fluctuate. “People come and go or their careers or travel schedule becomes such that you can’t make the early morning,” she said. “It’s pretty much a part of the way it’s been for the last four or five years.”

The club would like to keep its membership number around the maximum 35, but lately it’s been in a range between 25 and 32. But unlike other clubs that want members to come to every meeting, it allows inactive members to return once they can make the commitment or occasionally welcomes old members who may have moved out of town to a meeting.

The biggest focus of many breakfast clubs now is to attract younger members who will potentially participate long term.

“I think the future of any organization continues to grow and thrive when you attract younger members,” said Vaught.

Elliott is looking beyond numbers to expanding chapters. There are many clubs on the west side of Greater Des Moines, he said, but he wants to open more on the East side and eventually Ames and Indianola.

“People wouldn’t be renewing year after year,” said Elliott, “if it wasn’t working for them.”