Each Serran is a member of a local Serra Club sanctioned by the Ordinary of the diocese in which the Serra Club is located.

Since it was founded in 1935, in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., Serra has chartered 1,109 Serra Clubs in 46 countries on six continents.

Serra's objectives and purposes are:

• To foster and promote vocations to the ministerial priesthood in the Catholic Church as a particular vocation to service, and to support priests in their sacred ministry
• To encourage and affirm vocations to consecrated religious life in the Catholic Church
• To assist its members to recognize and respond in their own lives to God's call to holiness in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.