Rotary Club

I had lunch with the Rotary Club twice during my stay in Nocona.  My supervisor, James, is the Treasurer of the dozen-member civic organization, and he and his wife cook all the food for the lunchtime meetings. 

There are a handful of civic organizations in Nocona:  Rotary Club, Lion’s Club and a local chapter of the Free Masons.  Additionally, I heard there is an old lady painting club. 

I was a bit surprised to discover the small size of the civic clubs in town.  However, if you do the math and there are about 30 to 50 people out of a town of 3,000 that are involved in a civic organization, you have a 1% to 2% participation rate.  I would guess that those numbers are steady in other towns as well.  However, I feel like the clubs are so small that it is difficult for them to really do anything.  The Rotary Club puts on one major philanthropy event a year.  Even that, with the dwindling support and participation of the town, the club had a difficult time justifying the event because of economic feasibility. 

Another community problem that came to light at one of the meetings was the fact that a vast majority of major community events in the county occur over a period of about two months.  This is especially problematic when you have the same core group of volunteers leading most of the activities.  There are also issues with people and organizations failing to plan events far enough in advance.  The result is a quickly thrown together and rough event (or series of events) that exhausts and frustrates the volunteers.  Every weekend from mid-April to mid-June is filled with an event.  And unfortunately “that’s the way we’ve always done it” is often the reply whenever moving an event to another part of the year is suggested.