Clubs Depend On Volunteers, No Matter How Large or Small Your Contribution

I’m sure all the clubs are busy making the trails ready for the upcoming season, this requires the help of a lot of volunteers. If you haven’t volunteered to help, contact your local club, and do your share to make this sport happen. Even a few hours can be a benefit to the club. What you do, is that much less that has to be done.

As the president of our local club a few years ago I learned the value of even the smallest contribution.

For instance, our club would have a potluck supper at each meeting. At one of our meetings a member, I’ll call him Mike, wasn’t able to bring a dish so he offered to pay for the coffee for the evening.

Trying to be the nice guy, I told him not to worry, that the club covers the coffee at all the meetings. After all, we had a coffee maker and it was only just pennies to make a pot. Now, Mike was an older gentleman but he was at all the trail work parties and did what he could to help.

At that meeting, I noticed Mike didn’t show up to do trail work anymore. A couple meetings later I asked one of our members who knew Mike well, why he wasn’t coming to club events anymore, hoping he wasn’t ill or something. She told me when I didn’t accept his contribution for the coffee that meeting, he was uncomfortable the rest of the evening and thought I didn’t appreciate his contributions even though they were small. Yes, Mike’s contributions were small but when he wasn’t there to help someone else had to step in. We missed him.

We must acknowledge all contributions large and small. Many people have very busy lives and are not able to give a lot of their time or money but sometimes what may seem as a small contribution to us may in fact be a large commitment for the giver.

Your clubs depend on volunteers, no matter how large or small your contribution, it helps and will be appreciated. Please contact your local club and offer to help.