Successful
Actions of New Market Grange - MD
The small town of New Market is known as the Antiques Capital of Maryland. “We have about 450 residents,” says Betty Thompson, President of the New Market Grange, “but we’re losing a lot of our farm land to development because we’re just about equal distance from Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland.”
New Market Grange was chartered in 1920. They were first organized in 1874, and then lapsed sometime later. They were reorganized in 1920 and have been active ever since. Five years ago, New Market Grange had a membership of about 58 people. “Over the last five years, we took in 50 new members,” says John Thompson, “and we lost thirty of those so we had a net gain of 20 new members, making our current membership 78.”
“Our membership is a good mix of old and young,” says Betty. “Ten of our new members were high school FFA students. They’ve been a real asset for us. They are the first ones to raise their hands to volunteer on a project. Five of those young people have gone on to college now so we don’t see much of them when they’re in school. But they are still active when they come home for vacations.”
The desire to stay in touch with their college-aged members spurred one committee to send all their college students a care-package. “I didn’t even know they were going to do that,” says Betty. “But they timed it just right so the care packages arrived at the end of the semester when they were all studying for exams. We sent food and other items they might need – tissues, shampoo, and so on. We got the most wonderful thank you notes from our students.”
Richard Stonebraker, Vice-President of the local FFA Chapter and New Market Grange member says, “We got involved with Grange because FFA got so much support from Grange. Whenever we ask for help, New Market Grange has been there for us. Financially, they’ve helped. And they just kept our spirits up. What makes me proudest of New Market Grange is just that – we’re always reaching out to help.”
For the last five years, New Market Grange has been a financial donor to FFA. “We’ve given them $2000 a year to go to the National FFA Convention,” says John. “But our involvement hasn’t stopped there. We cooperate with another local Grange and the FFA to put on a community show, and FFA students put on a parliamentary procedure program for us every year. It’s practice for them before they go to their National Convention.”
“We’ve always been involved with our local FFA Chapter,” says John Thompson.
“Our local Vocational Agriculture teacher is a Grange member, and both the President and Vice-President of FFA are Grangers. We have a few other young people who joined with their families, but they haven’t been as active as the FFA members.”
New Market Grange operates with a budget of about $30,000 per year. “Our hall is rented better than 100 times a year and brings in between $15,000 and $17,000,” says John. “And the basement is rented year-round to Tumble Time for Tots,” adds Betty. “It’s a nice hall, our rent is reasonable, and having it available is really a service to the community. Our town isn’t very big, and the Grange Hall is really the place where people can gather. There are a lot of family reunions and wedding receptions in our hall, and sometimes it’s reserved a year in advance!”
“We make $10,000 each year at our County Fair Food Booth,” says John. “We’ve been doing that for maybe 65 years and we have a real reputation for chicken corn soup and other specialties. FFA really helps us a lot with the food booth. Those young people really work for us.”
“Dues bring in about $1200,” says John. “We donate between $5000-$6000 every year – to FFA, other organizations, scholarships, and so forth. And the rest we’ve been putting toward maintaining our hall which was built in 1965. We’ve paved our parking lot and done other improvements.”
“We think our scholarships have been an incentive for young people to become members. We talked a lot about whether to open the scholarships to anybody, but we decided to offer them only to Grange members. Last year we offered four $500 scholarships. And at our next meeting our scholarship winners are going to do our program. One young man is studying mechanical engineering and is going to bring in a robot that he built for class. Another girl just got back from studying in China and she’s going to tell us about that experience. An architectural engineering student is going to explain some of the drawings she had to do for a class project. Another is studying horticulture and landscaping so maybe she’ll demonstrate flower arranging. I hope that Richard will play the piano. It’s going to be a wonderful program,” says Betty.
Kris Anderson, Program Chairman says, “I think that one thing that really keeps us vital is that mix of ages. We have a lot of experience with long-time members of Grange, as well as new members. Being involved with us appeals to FFA members and other young people. They see that we have a variety of ages in New Market Grange, and that makes them feel like they can fit right in.”
“Another thing that keeps us vital is that we meet twice a month,” says Kris. “Meeting that often creates a sense of energy. Certainly not everyone can attend that frequently, but it means that many of us see each other often and it’s easier to cook up ways to reach out into the community.”
“We do meet twice a month,” says Betty. “One meeting we set up all the stations, and have a full business meeting before our program. We start the other meeting with a covered dish supper and have a round table meeting with a program. That’s where we have a lot of fun with each other. Guess which meeting is better attended!”
“Since we do have a program at every meeting, that can be a lot for our Program Chairman to be in charge of.” Betty speaks with authority because she has held the position that they used to call Lecturer. “Each of our major committees – Agriculture, Education, Community Involvement, Health and Safety, Legislative, and so on – is responsible for putting on one program a year. They do some really interesting programs, and it sort of helps us get a better handle on what the committee is doing too.”
“I think some changes that we made in the last five years have helped bring in new members,” says John. “We thought the secrecy was a real detriment and it was not inviting to new members. So we stopped taking the word, we changed the Gatekeeper to Greeter and really started welcoming people to our meetings. We changed some of our officer titles – President instead of Master, Vice-President instead of Overseer, Program Chairman instead of Lecturer, and Greeter instead of Gatekeeper. We do a less formal opening. We do open the Bible, salute the flag, and we do the salutation.”
New Market Grange has become the “go to” organization for their town. “One of our members has been elected to the Town Council, and that has really opened communication for us,” says John. “We’ve joined the Tourism and Trade Council and are listed on their website. We’ve put mulch down at the playground. We open our hall to the church that serves food during New Market Days. We’ve really got a great relationship with the Town.”
Betty adds, “We participate in Christmas in New Market by decorating the lamp posts. We have a wonderful time doing that!”
New Market Grange publishes an occasional newsletter to keep members who aren’t able to get to meetings up-to-date. And they also publish a program of work every year. “That’s certainly not cast in stone. One of our improvised meetings involved putting together health kits for Tsunami victims. We just put aside what we’d planned for that meeting and did this instead. We put together a hundred health kits – and we had so much fun working together.”
Getting involved in the community has become an important ingredient for New Market Grange. “We do the Dictionary Project every year, giving out 100-120 dictionaries to our third graders. That’s given us a really nice exposure in the school. The school looks forward to it, and we take the opportunity to educate the school children about farming, where food comes from, and the importance of agriculture,” says Kris. “Our younger members are particularly passionate about why agriculture is so important. Some members are 3 rd or 4 th generation farmers.”
New Market Grange also supports Foster Care. “We gave $100 to a local Foster Family. Each family took a particular age and filled a tote bag with items that foster children might need,” says Lori Anderson. “Being able to do good things in the community was a big reason I decided to join Grange.”
“We recognize a community citizen every year,” Lori adds. “This year we recognized a firefighter who rescued a lady and her dog who had gone too far out on the ice and both fell into the lake.”
“We do have a few warts,” says Betty. “We don’t have a Junior Grange, though we are planning a Junior Grange day this summer that we hope might generate interest. We have young people involved in our Grange, but we don’t have a specific Youth Program.
Two of our youth did enter the public speaking contest, but we could do more with that. One of our young people has agreed to be the State Youth Director which is really challenging because we haven’t had an active program statewide. I really hope he won’t get discouraged. He’s so talented, and yet it’s such a big job.”
New Market Grange doesn’t hide their light under a bushel, getting lots of publicity. “We have a wonderful Reporter in our Grange. She sends our bi-weekly notices to our county newspaper, and our town has begun putting out a newsletter and they ask us for notices,” says Betty. “And the newspaper is very supportive of agriculture,” John adds. Every Monday, there’s a big spread about some agricultural topic, and they’ll often include us in it. If we send them something, we can count on it being printed!”
Betty sums up an important element of New Market Grange’s success. “We really do believe in having a good time along with our serious discussions. As President, I try to be truly appreciative of everything everyone is doing and keep an optimistic attitude. We have really interesting discussions. At our last meeting we discussed ritual. Some people wanted more, some wanted less. We really hashed it out. And we were all still friends at the end.” |
