Grange Action Program

Successful Actions of Perry Valley Grange - PA

Located in central Pennsylvania about 25 miles northwest of the state capital, Perry Valley Grange has a membership of about 170. “Our Grange was organized in 1919 and has been continuously active since that time, says Doug Bonsall, President. “For the first 53 years our Grange was in existence, we didn’t own a building. They met in people’s homes or other places in the community.”

“Today we have about 170 members which is roughly the same as it’s been for the last five years. The composition of our members has changed, though. We have about 140 individual members, and another 30 of what we call Business Partners. That’s like a special category of Associate Membership where they pay an annual fee that helps support our work, and in turn we provide advertising for them on our website and in our bi-monthly newsletters. We have a broad spectrum of ages from teens to people in their 90’s. The most active ones are probably 50 and up although we do have some younger members who help with special projects.”

“We meet monthly and our meetings take a variety of forms. Long before the Action Grange program began, we chose to change the way we operate. We felt – and observed – that secrecy and ritual were not appealing for the people who live in our community. The majority of our members were no longer active farmers, and we really needed to appeal to a whole range of other lifestyles. So starting in 1990, we stopped taking the password, and we began having a variety of different kinds of meetings.”

“Every other month we have a business meeting that begins with a social hour at 7PM. Usually we have dessert, and then we move into a fairly formal business meeting. We try to have everything done by 9 o’clock.”

“Then on alternate months, we have what we call a Fellowship Dinner. It’s a potluck meal where we usually invite some other group to be our guests for the meal and an educational program. Usually that’s held at our hall, but sometimes we might meet at a restaurant or take a bus tour of a local attraction or historical site.”

“What we find is that we have a core of people who participate in almost everything. And then we have others who sort of pick and choose the events that appeal to them. That seems to help us meet a broad spectrum of people’s needs. Business meeting attendance usually ranges between twenty and thirty. Generally there’s a larger turn-out at the Fellowship Dinners, but of course some of those attending are our guests. We might invite the FFA or Emergency Services Personnel, or other groups in the community. For example, when we entertained local senior citizens this past summer for a free dinner, we invited a nationally known consumer advocate come in to speak.”

“I guess you could say that we were an Action Grange a long time ago. And when National Grange started offering Action Grange, we really welcomed it. One of the things we did in the late 1990’s was to change our process of governance and how decisions get made. We amended our by-laws to expand our Executive Committee, and now the majority of our business is handled by this 12-person Executive Committee. And that has let us streamline our regular meetings. Our members really seem grateful to let the Executive Committee handle most things so our meetings are not these long drawn-out affairs. Of course there are certain issues that have to be presented to the entire membership, but with an active Grange like ours, it takes a long time to cover all that we’ve got going on. Our members seem quite satisfied to have the Executive Committee take responsibility for taking care of the facility and those kinds of things. Six members of the Executive Committee are elected and then six officers – President, Vice President, Program Chair, Financial Secretary, Recording Secretary, and Treasurer – serve on the Executive Committee as part of the responsibilities of their offices. The Executive Committee meets regularly every other month and is on call for special issues.”

“Our main focus is on community service, and the goals we have adopted reflect that. Almost all of what we do is in an effort to serve the community. We had 24 different projects that we did throughout the past year.”

Perry Valley Grange has a very comprehensive and user-friendly website, www.perryvalleygrange.org, where you can find out more about all their activities. Here are just a few highlights.

Most of Perry Valley Grange’s annual $75,000 plus budget comes from serving banquets, receptions, and public dinners. “That’s our general fund budget, says Doug. “Our last couple of years’ budgets have actually been higher because we’ve been doing renovations on our facilities.”

“Our current Grange Hall is in a great location, right on a busy highway, and extremely visible. And it’s a wonderful building sitting on four acres of land.” But it wasn’t always so as Doug is quick to point out. “Our first Grange Hall was out in the country and completely landlocked. Then in 1988, what we thought was a tragedy turned out to be a really good thing. The old hall had a fire and was badly damaged. And a group of very hard-working and dedicated people put the insurance and lots of donations into building our present building. They were able to move into the new building in a matter of months after the fire – and with a very small mortgage. The fire was actually the best thing that ever happened to us. It’s a much better location and a much better facility. We’ve got land where we can do things and a stainless steel commercial kitchen. We’re really well-set up to serve any kind of dinner. Our facility has really been a great foundation – and the catalyst that has allowed us to be of far greater service to our community.”

“We have a rather sophisticated planning and budgeting process,” says Doug. “We do that in the fall of the year, and while nothing is set absolutely in stone, it gives us a great guide for our labors throughout the year.”

With all the success that Perry Valley Grange has enjoyed, they have also endured some rather surprising ill will. “Some of our more traditional Grange neighbors consider us to be outlaws because we do things differently. We advertise and publicize that every Grange activity is open to anyone who wants to come. We never exclude anyone. We’ve found that it works for us and has allowed us to maintain our membership whereas many of our neighbor Granges seems to be declining in membership. And truthfully when we have a visitation night and other Granges visit our Grange, some people have told us that our business meetings are actually more formal than they’re able to hold because they don’t have enough people coming to their meetings.”

Degrees have not been conferred at Perry Valley Grange or in their Pomona for quite a few years. “We do have a full obligation ceremony when new members join. We use the approved Alternative Opening and Closing Ceremonies that National Grange developed as a result of Action Grange. Some of our officers have memorized their parts; others have not. We do have officer rehearsal several times a year because we want everything we do to be impressive and to the point – without taking up too much time.”

“People are very busy,” says Doug. There just aren’t a lot of people who can be at every single Grange event – like there were when I was growing up as a 4 th generation Granger. So it takes more time and effort to educate people. I do worry about the future and whether there will be people who are willing to take over responsibilities for leadership. It takes a core group of people who sort of act as the glue in an organization – people who can provide some consistency from activity to activity. It’s continually challenging to find those people.”

“As of six or seven years ago, we no longer have a Junior Grange because we didn’t have enough Grange members who had children of that age. And we lacked someone who was able to provide the leadership. Now, we’re hoping that our relationship with FFA might bear well for the future. We do work with two local FFA chapters – and without their advisors and members who serve at our public dinners, we probably wouldn’t be able to hold those dinners. We haven’t seen the FFA students become active in Grange yet partly because they are so active in FFA. Grange isn’t on the cutting edge of youth development where we’re creating outstanding opportunities for young people anymore. Now it seems like FFA might be doing what Grange Youth Programs used to do.”

Perry Valley Grange has developed a comprehensive list and description of officer and committee responsibilities which can be found at www.nationalgrange.org/ActionGrange/Success/officer_committee.htm. “I’m a firm believer in giving people jobs. We do a great deal of calling and asking people to come and help or make a cake or whatever. We ask people to serve on the Social Committee once a year. Leaders probably serve more often than that just to pick up the slack, but sometimes people will only come once a year on a night when they’re on the Social Committee. I’d rather see them once a year than not at all!”

When asked what it takes to get new members, Doug responds. “It’s very difficult today to get new members just because of one particular project. The way you get new members is to be doing constantly in the community. We take in an average of 10-15 new members every year – and that’s what it takes to replace members that we lose for one reason or another. We need people who can come in with new ideas and some willingness to share the load. It takes a lot more people – a bigger pool to draw from - to be there one night a week than it did when people expected to be there two nights a week.”