Merchants support community year-round

By Roger Estlack

The Clarendon Merchants Association this week presented a ceremonial check for $2,500 to the Donley County Senior Citizens, the funds from a promotion on December 16.

The senior citizens centers in Clarendon and Hedley are in dire need of donations right now. Even though the centers are constantly facing funding challenges, in recent months the federal government has added more burdens with new food preparation guidelines and a requirement that every home delivered meal includes milk – whether the recipient wants milk or not. The Donley County Senior Citizens Center says the new food preparation rules mean it needs about $5,000 worth of new equipment, and the milk requirement will cost it about $1,000 per month.

So several Clarendon merchants stepped up in the holiday spirit, put a promotion together within a few days, and quickly raised quite a bit of money. For the photo this week, the merchants had an oversized ceremonial check, but what the center actually received was an envelope full of checks from each of the participating businesses. And that envelope is the real story.

Each of those nine businesses give numerous checks to different organizations throughout the year. And just because a local merchant wasn’t involved in this particular promotion, don’t think that they don’t support the senior citizens or other worthwhile groups in our community. The livestock show, the FFA, the Boy and Girl Scouts, the museum, the child welfare board, and local churches are just some of the beneficiaries of our local businesses. If we collectively added together how much our local merchants give back to our community every year, the total would surely be in the tens of thousands of dollars and probably more.

If you shop at home, that’s your money at work for your community. You support them, and the local merchants support everything from our kids’ baseball programs to our seniors’ Meals On Wheels program.  And then they also pay the taxes to support our schools, our city, our county, our ambulance service, and our college. You might get a great deal from a merchant somewhere else, but that big city merchant or online store probably won’t pony up when Clarendon High School yearbook asks for an advertisement.

Hundreds of checks supporting dozens of causes, activities, fundraisers, and organizations – that’s what shopping at home means. More money spent at our local merchatns means the city will have more money to fix your street, the church will have more money to reach those in need, and the scouts will be able to send more kids to camp.

Shopping at home helps our local merchants, but it also improves the quality of life of our community. Let’s all keep that in mind as we make our purchases in 2012.