Discover More About Rainbow

The International Order of the Rainbow for Girls is a nonprofit service organization for girls between the ages of 10 and 20. Rev. W. Mark Sexson founded our order in McAlester, Oklahoma, in April 1922. He sought to develop an organization where young women could build self-confidence and leadership skills while serving their community. The organization promotes community service, as well as love and service to their schools, their homes, and to each other.

Our order prepares the girls of today to be the leaders of tomorrow. The International Order of the Rainbow for Girls, called Rainbow for short, teaches leadership skills and public speaking. It builds self-respect, confidence, poise, patriotism, fidelity, integrity, and character while providing a fun and safe environment for girls to meet other girls their age and build friendships that will last a lifetime.

Rainbow also teaches girls to be part of a team, successfully communicate with each other, and trust members. We want our girls to have positive role models and mentors so that younger girls can continue to influence the new members of the assembly as they grow older.

The International Order of the Rainbow for Girls has an active membership across the world. Our organization has 275,000 members in 45 states and nine foreign countries: Queensland and New South Wales, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Aruba, Japan, the Philippines, Canada and Germany. Since our order began in 1922, more than one million girls have been initiated into our order. We have more than one million majority members (girls over the age of 20 who are no longer considered active members) who have gone through our order and still participate as adults.

Former members of the order include Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Former Miss California and Actress Lee Meriwether, Actress Lily Tomlin, and Actress Dawn Wells. Maine’s Senator Olympia Snowe had this to say about the order: