Although the average degree of solvency among friendly societies has been steadily rising in recent years, valuations in a considerable number of cases still disclose a deficiency. Some of the large affiliated orders have methods of their own for assisting branches in difficulties, but in the case of many societies no such help is available, and other means have to be found for improving the financial position. The object of the paper is to consider some of the methods by which the degree of solvency may be raised, more particularly with reference to such aspects of the problem as (1) negative values, (2) the relative shares of the extinguished deficiency borne by members of different ages, and (3) the effect of different age distributions.