What is a Volunteer Worth?

Note: This first appeared in 2009.

During the Enid Amateur Radio Club's August meeting, along with the usual business, we discussed the public service events coming up that we would be assisting with. The EARC has between 10-15 different events locally that we help with each year by either providing safety for the participants or actually organizing.
The EARC  has even gotten the reputation as "the parade club". We help organize and coordinate the parade participants before hand getting everyone lined up so to all of the folks watching it is a seamless convoy of floats and important dignitaries riding in old cars. If you need someone to help you with your event, the EARC is usually mentioned first. We also work with our local police department manning road barricades and provide other safety oriented services. During this meeting we had two individuals from separate organizations asking if we could be part of their events.

It is about this time of the year that the club becomes very busy with several events.  The club will do a majority of our public service events between September and November. Our club's contact person is approached by organizations looking for assistance and then he comes before the club for input as to whether we can help. It is also about this time that the volunteers for the EARC start to feel somewhat overwhelmed. We barley have enough time as it is with family and work, now we add extra time with our club.

So what is our time worth? 

It has come to the attention of the Enid Amateur Radio Club that someone is sending hateful letters to amateur radio operators complaining about the operation of their station. This individual is using the W5HTK club call sign and our trustee's return address on the envelopes. We can only imagine that this is to make it appear that the letters are coming from someone authorized by the club or in an attempt to attain some validity to their complaints.