The Community Chest

Remember the last time you played monopoly? There was a card in there call community chest, and maybe you won 10 or 15 dollars for landing on it.

I always thought that it was some sort of a myth.

But here in our little town, I have been the Board President of the Village of Valders Community Chest for I guess about 5 years.

Each year, through some fairly intensive fund-raising over a one month period, usually the month of October, our board enlists the help of some of our community members, and we proceed to raise a significant amount of money..

The purpose of this is the support of our community.

Our monies are then donated to quite a few of our local charitable and non-profit organizations, enabling them to continue to do their jobs. In some cases, we are the only support that these programs have for the entire year.

Imagine us as the United Way for our little area. As a matter of fact, they are one of the organizations that we contribute to.

This entity has been in existence for I think, something like 50 years. We do have a reasonably slow rotation of board members and volunteer, with the average tenure spanning something like 10 years.

And here is my point. Like any other event, group, volunteer organization, fraternal group, fill in the blank, it is the same group of faces that are seen here.

Why is it that in any organization, even our town, there seems always to be a core group of people who are involved in absolutely everything? I bet in your church, school, ymca, theatrical organization, etc, you can find five to ten people who seem to always be involved in whatever it is that is going on.

I expect the easy answer to be that this sort of person just has the right personality. BS. I am quickly turning into one of those people in this village, and believe me, I have never been one of those people.

What changed for me? Somebody asked.

So here is the deal. I think that a great many of you reading this are one of the people that I am talking about tonight, involved, always involved. I challenge you to become one of the people who asked. I dare you to pick one or two, (or ten, you know who you are) of the things that you spend your time being involved in, and see how many people you can recruit to participate. Remember, many hands makes light work.

Recruit, Recruit, Recruit!

Learning Every Day,
Greg