1917–2026
A worldwide story of service.
Lexington Lions is one local chapter in a movement that now spans the globe. Here's how Lions Clubs International grew from one meeting in Chicago into the world's largest volunteer service club organization.
It started with a simple idea: business and civic clubs should look outward, not just inward.
In 1917, Chicago insurance executive Melvin Jones asked members of his own business club a pointed question: what if these clubs did something for their communities, not just for their members? That question led him to invite clubs from around the country to a founding convention in Dallas that October—and Lions Clubs International was born.
Lexington Lions joined that story a decade later, chartered in 1927 as the eighth Lions club in South Carolina.
Read our own club's history1925 · CEDAR POINT, OHIO
"Knights of the Blind."
"I appeal to you Lions, you who have your sight, your hearing, you who are strong and brave and kind. Will you not constitute yourselves Knights of the Blind in this crusade against darkness?"
Helen Keller posed that challenge to Lions at their international convention in 1925. Lions took it up, and vision has remained a signature cause of the organization ever since—from local eyeglass recycling drives to Campaign SightFirst, a decades-long global effort against preventable and reversible blindness.
A CENTURY OF MILESTONES
Major milestones, decade by decade.
A selection of turning points from Lions Clubs International's own historical record. Some early dates vary slightly between sources, as is common for an organization now more than a century old.
- 1917
Melvin Jones invites business clubs from around the country to a founding convention in Dallas, where delegates adopt a constitution and by-laws and organize the International Association of Lions Clubs.
- 1920
The first club outside the United States is chartered in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, making Lions a truly international organization within its first three years.
- 1925
Helen Keller challenges Lions at their international convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, to become "Knights of the Blind"—launching Lions' long-running commitment to fighting blindness and vision loss.
- 1931
After a member witnesses a blind pedestrian struggling to cross a busy street, Lions begins promoting the white cane as a safety symbol nationwide, work that later grew into White Cane Safety Day.
- 1945
Lions Clubs International is invited to help draft the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, one of the first nongovernmental organizations to take part.
- 1954
"We Serve" is formally adopted as Lions' international motto, putting a name to an ethos that had guided the organization since its founding.
- 1957
The first Leo Club—Lions' youth leadership and service program—is founded at a high school in Glenside, Pennsylvania.
- 1968
Lions Clubs International Foundation (LCIF) is established to fund disaster relief and humanitarian grants worldwide; its first grant, $5,000 for flood relief in South Dakota, follows in 1972.
- 1973
Lions welcomes its one-millionth member.
- 1987
After seventy years as a male-only organization, Lions amends its constitution to admit women as members.
- 1990
Campaign SightFirst launches—at the time, the most ambitious effort ever undertaken against preventable and reversible blindness.
- 1999
Nilofer Bakhtiar is elected Lions' first female international director.
- 2002
LCIF and Johnson & Johnson Vision launch Sight for Kids, a children's vision-screening program that would go on to reach more than 50 million students worldwide.
- 2005
Campaign SightFirst II raises more than $200 million to continue the fight against blindness worldwide.
- 2017
Lions Clubs International marks its Centennial with a convention in Chicago, the city where Melvin Jones first gathered local clubs a hundred years before. That same year, diabetes is named a new global cause.
- 2018
LCIF marks fifty years of grantmaking, having awarded more than $1 billion since 1968, and launches Campaign 100 to fund the next century of service.
- 2020
Lions Clubs International reports more than 1.4 million members across over 200 countries and geographic areas—the world's largest volunteer service club organization.
- 2022
Campaign 100 concludes, having raised more than $325 million for LCIF's humanitarian work worldwide.
- 2025–2026
LCIF marks 25 years of its Special Olympics "Opening Eyes" vision-screening partnership and reports its largest-ever year of grantmaking—nearly 2,000 grants totaling more than $52 million—continuing a mission that began with a handful of Chicago business owners in 1917.
STORIES WORTH TELLING
Did you know?
A motto decades in the making
"We Serve" guided Lions from the start, but it wasn't formally adopted as the organization's official motto until 1954—nearly forty years after Melvin Jones's first meeting.
Named for a founding city
Lions Clubs International is still headquartered in the Chicago area today, in Oak Brook, Illinois—not far from where Melvin Jones held that first organizing meeting in 1917.
A promise kept for a century
Helen Keller's 1925 "Knights of the Blind" challenge still shapes Lions' work today, from local eyeglass recycling to global vision-screening and cataract-surgery programs.
Bigger than any one club
What began as a single meeting of Chicago business clubs has grown into a network of more than 1.38 million members in over 50,000 clubs worldwide—including our own, chartered in Lexington in 1927.
DISTRICT & INTERNATIONAL
Lions today, by the numbers.
A recent snapshot of the movement Lexington Lions belongs to.
1.83%
Membership growth this year
322.5K
Service activities this year
$14.5M
Funds donated worldwide
59.65M
People served by LCI
2.57M
People served by LCIF
96.5K
Program participants this year
Source: Lions Clubs International Insights dashboard, September 2026.
LEARN MORE
Go deeper.
Our own club's history
Lexington Lions has its own hundred-year story, from our 1927 charter to today, as we look ahead to our 2027 centennial.
Read our centennial storyThe official record
Explore Lions Clubs International's own interactive history timeline and learn more about LCIF, our global foundation.
Visit the official Lions timelineJOIN THE STORY
Be part of the next chapter.
Lexington Lions is where this global story shows up in our own community—one project, one neighbor at a time.