Category: Community Service

by Walter Boomsma
Occasional Talking Head and Cage Rattler

The talking heads – and admittedly I am sometimes one of them – love buzzwords and catchphrases like “elevator speeches” and “value propositions.” Then we can ask “What’s your [fill in the blank]?”

As a talking head, I’d suggest that elevator speeches and value propositions create an internal focus. As a cage rattler, I have a different question.

Where does your community Grange fit into your community’s infrastructure?

“Infrastructure” is the set of facilities and systems that serve an area. Without digging too deep, hard infrastructure tends to be seen as physical-buildings, roads, etc. Soft infrastructure is all the institutions that maintain the economic, health, social, environmental, and cultural standards of an area.

Don’t get too overwhelmed.

We often talk about how important it is for a Grange to be relevant to its community. Maybe it’s time to think of our Granges as part of our community’s infrastructure. The Grange Hall falls under the category of hard infrastructure. The Grange is an institution that maintains the economic, health, social, environmental, and cultural standards of an area.

Or at least it used to.

How easy it is to take the infrastructure for granted…

What would happen if tomorrow you woke up and all the street signs in your area had disappeared? You lost some hard infrastructure. Or, suppose you decided to go to the library, and it was closed and boarded up? You lost some soft infrastructure–the building is still there, but the institution is gone. You might miss it for a while, particularly when you drive by the vacant building. Maybe your GPS will replace the need for street signs. The internet might substitute for the library.

Or maybe not.

Some years ago I talked with a school guidance counselor who expressed his frustration. His impression was that there were many resources available–the problem was finding them. He was happy to learn about what the Grange was doing and could do. But his question was “Why didn’t I know about this?!”

We attempted to develop a directory of community resources. It became part of the infrastructure describing the infrastructure!

If you’re a Granger (although that’s not a requirement) find a community leader and ask the question, “What’s missing in our community?”

Then figure out how to fill the void.

Voids create pain. You’ll get more members when you find people who share that pain and who feel the need to provide the missing infrastructure.

Here’s a not-too-creative example. Those monthly potluck suppers might be about fundraising, but we’re also starting to see monthly community suppers, sometimes free, provided by volunteers and donations. They are offered in part to address food insecurity but also to provide an opportunity for people to come together simply to be together, enjoy, and know each other. That’s pain relief, and it’s also infrastructure.

We have at least one Grange in Maine that has other organizations meeting in their hall nearly every night of the week. That’s infrastructure. That community has the hard and soft infrastructure that supports the efforts of non-profits like Alcoholics Anonymous, blood drives, birthday parties, and even celebrations of life.

What’s missing in your community? If you don’t know, start asking the question of your friends and neighbors. What’s one thing our community really needs! I’ll bet you get a lot of interest and dialog. Try it!