OPRF’s Tau Gamma always ready to serve

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The Tau Gamma Service Club at Oak Park-River Forest High School will be honored Feb. 21 by the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation.

Updated: March 17, 2012 10:12AM

Need help with a fund-raiser? Need a student tutor? Need assistance with your nonprofit housewalk, Bowl-a-Thon, plant sale, pancake breakfast or Family Fireside Halloween Event?

Call Tau Gamma.

The service club at Oak Park-River Forest High School is relentless in its goal of providing fund-raising and service activities to benefit the Oak Park and River Forest communities.

The 100-member group’s ability to help local nonprofits succeed is the reason for its recognition by the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation’s Excellence in Philanthropy: Youth Award.

The Tau Gamma Service Club is managed by seven high school senior officers and two faculty co-sponsors. Rooted in a Girl’s Club founded at the high school in 1916, the club changed its name to Tau Gamma and opened to boys in 1976-77. Though it welcomes boys today, none have had a lasting membership, to the joking amazement of faculty sponsor and OPRF French teacher Betsy Farley.

“He’d be the smartest boy in the school, to be in a group with a hundred girls,” Farley laughed. She and her fellow co-sponsor, Maureen Grady, meet with Tau Gamma every Friday morning. They assess requests from local nonprofit organizations that are assigned to one of the seven student officers to manage and act as Tau Gamma liaison.

“We work with all the agencies in the area,” Farley said, including such institutions as:

Hephzibah — volunteer help at fund-raisers,

Animal Care League — help with its Holiday Basket event,

Cheney Mansion — serve as elves at breakfast with Santa,

And the high school itself — providing a breakfast for senior citizens, school tours for Homecoming and incoming freshmen, and fund-raising to underwrite fellow students.

School counselors contact Tau Gamma when they identify students in need of money for items such as testing fees, bus passes, prom tickets or winter clothing.

This barely taps Tau Gamma’s checklist of activities. Tau Gamma girls are engaged in service every week, Farley said, with efforts intensified at the holidays. Members also tutor younger students and assist with childcare to benefit Parenthesis and a number of support groups, allowing full-time caretakers to attend.

“For the girls who are really involved, it’s like having another class. Their enthusiasm is incredible,” Farley said. “The group has girls from every year in high school and has become big enough to have lost its ‘club’ feel. It’s really unbelievable to see.”

Mission-wise, Tau Gamma is devoted to promoting an awareness of community and individual needs and addressing these needs through service and fund-raising. Associated with several local and national philanthropic groups, in a sense Tau Gamma takes the place of the service requirement placed on students by some other high schools, Farley said.

“It’s nice that the high school supports an organized way to volunteer,” she said, adding that the group also provides “invaluable leadership experience and a good opportunity to work with adults and build communication skills.”

Perhaps the group’s singular largest effort is a winter high school formal dance, King of Hearts, that it plans and sponsors to raise money for a local Make-A-Wish Child. In 2011, Tau Gamma raised $5,000 for a child from Elmwood Park.

Often, Tau Gamma girls who graduate continue their service work through Big Sisters or other college-endorsed volunteer programs, Farley noted. Part of Tau Gamma’s goal is to teach the importance and benefits of lifelong volunteerism, which aligns with the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundations’s belief in an essential connection between philanthropic leadership and community sustainability.

As part of its Excellence in Philanthropy Award, the Foundation will provide a $500 grant to a nonprofit organization selected by Tau Gamma. Sarah’s Inn is its recipient of choice, a group committed to women and families seeking freedom from domestic violence.