Successful
Actions of North Cameron Grange - NY
In the 1970’s and 80’s, North Cameron Grange in Steuben County, New York, had over 200 members listed on their books, but had only a small fraction of their membership attending meetings. “Now, we have only 79 members, but we have wonderful attendance and participation!” says Sam Kaszczynec.
Many things have happened to create the shift in membership and participation for North Cameron Grange, but the one that had the most dramatic impact was when their old Grange Hall burned. “The old Hall was originally a cheese factory. It didn’t even have flush toilets,” says Sam.
“It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Even though we lost the property, it was insured, and we were able to build a nice one-story building – with flush toilets. It’s available for rentals. It’s only $10 to rent if you’re a Grange member and $25 if you’re not a member. We’re fortunate because $25 covers our electric bill for a month.”
“We do things differently than the old Grange too,” says David Crane, current President. “We’ve started taking trips – with Grangers, but also inviting other non-members to come along. We’ve gone to Canada, to some Caverns, minor league baseball games, hockey games and those kinds of things. We’ve had a lot of fun – and that’s what people are starting to think about Grange. Our activity level has definitely increased. We really try to get everybody to participate – whether it’s coming along on our trips or going to visit other Granges.”
Sam adds, “So far, we’ve been able to car pool and folks have just been absorbing the cost of gas. With the increase in prices, we may have to look at doing our trips differently. But I think we’ll still go places. It’s been good for our Grange to do that.”
“We found a member who really enjoys setting up activities – so we made him our Activity Director. He comes up with a list of activities, brings it to the Grange, we add to the list, and then he sets it all up. He makes the arrangements with where we’re going and takes care of a lot of the details. And he likes doing it!”
“We meet twice a month on the 2 nd and 4 th Saturdays – year round unless the weather is bad. We eat at 7, meet at 8, and by 9, we’re playing cards and talking,” says David. “I’m an “orange” personality type, so my motto is ‘get ‘er done!’ We make sure that our meetings move – and that they’re fun!”
“We help park cars at a local Farm-City Day that’s held at a dairy farm. We participate in our fairs and Dairy Festival. We’ve had a float in the Dairy Festival Parade for several years,’ says David. “We have a lot of fun doing these things too. We have some members who don’t often come to a meeting, but they’ll be there to help our with the Festival and other things we’ve got going on. Our teens do a lot of activities, and we try and help our the local fire departments.”
“Serving food at the Dairy Festival is our biggest fundraiser. We also put on dinners for individuals – usually to celebrate anniversaries. We do the dinner for a local Flying Club Christmas Party every year, and we have a big yard sale every year too.”
“Our Junior Grange has kind of gotten kicked off full force,” says David, “because we had a lot more Juniors come in. Now we’re working on getting their parents involved. Since we’re an Action Grange, we consider our Juniors to be an Action Junior Grange. They developed their own opening which they did at State Session last year. It’s a little different from the traditional opening, and they got really good feedback on what they did.”
“Our Juniors served coffee at a rest area on Interstate 86 for two days in a row. Of course adults went out there with them too. They gave away coffee, cupcakes, donuts, and that sort of thing. They even had dog biscuits – all for donations. They just put up a sign asking people to donate, and they cleared $900! That paid for them to go to Grange Camp.”
“Our State Master encouraged us to be part of Action Grange,” says Sam. “It kind of gave us a free pass to explore how we could get new members.”
“We have gotten a few new members since Action Grange,” says David. “We kind of took it slow. We did drop the password and the knock on the door. And we didn’t get negative feedback from most of our members. We’ve lost a few older members for obvious reasons, but our activity has definitely increased. We try to get everybody to participate, whatever we do.” |
