The unsung ‘CEOs’ and ‘CFOs’ quietly keeping our communities alive: Glenn Dwight

It takes a Chief Excitement Officer, a Chief Fundraising Officer and a Chief Organising Officer to co-ordinate a community barbecue. Photo/ Dave Reid

About two years ago, I wrote about community halls and how they sit at the heart of rural New Zealand. And I still stand by that.

I still love a community hall.

I love the slightly LPG-cylinder-shaped Zip on the side of the kitchen wall with “WARNING HOT” handwritten by what I assume was a victim of the Zip.

I love the sound of chairs being dragged across a wooden floor and the punishing cry they emit during the process.

I love the smell of instant coffee and the fact that every community hall kitchen has a collection of Arcoroc cups that would be the envy of any school staff room.

But in recent times, I have had a slight change of heart.

Not about the hall itself, they still have a special place in my heart. But about what really makes them matter.

Because, as much as we like to think the hall is the heart of the community, it is not the building. It is the people who fill it.

The people who fill the Zip with water. The people who fill the cups with tea. The people who drag the chairs, sit on them, stack them, and complain about them.

The people are the point. And every community needs them for a community to work.

Which got me thinking. Who are the people who actually make this ecosystem work? The people who take a group of strangers and somehow turn them into a community.

Every successful community needs a CEO. And by that I mean a Chief Excitement Officer.

These are the people with the ideas.

The ones who see a patch of land and think, imagine if that were a community cricket pitch. Or a community playground. Or if that was a mural and not a colourless concrete wall.

They are always the first to get excited, and usually the first to be told it will never work.

They are accused of being unrealistic, overly optimistic, or dreaming too big.

They nod politely, ignore the criticism, and keep going anyway.

And here is the key part. Their excitement spreads. Faster than gossip at a school gate.

Then there is the CFO: the Chief Fundraising Officer.

These people have a special gift. They can look at a sausage in a piece of white bread and see $5 ($5.50 in winter).

They can look at a rickety old trestle table and see a cake stall.

They are unfazed by raffles, donation buckets, quiz nights, and the occasional slightly dodgy sweepstake on a snail race.

They know which businesses will donate a voucher, which ones need a follow-up, and which ones will only respond if you pop in for a “chat”.

Without these people, ideas would never get off the ground.

They would stay firmly grounded. Which is very Kiwi the bird, but not very Kiwi the attitude.

Next up is the COO: the Chief Organising Officer.

These people are the real heroes. They do not panic when they see a spreadsheet. They do not fear columns, formulas, or tabs.

They quietly keep everything moving.

They know who is bringing what, who is setting up, who is opening the hall and who has the key. They send calm emails.

They smile when things change at the last minute. They are the reason events happen on the right day, at roughly the right time.

And then there is the most important group of all: the community itself.

These are the people who buy the sausage outside the hardware store when they are not even hungry, and the last thing they feel like is a sausage.

The people who turn up to quiz nights, raffles, working bees, and fundraisers.

The people who chuck a few dollars in even when money is tight.

The people who say, “I can help,” or “I can bake,” or “I can give you an hour”. Without them, nothing works.

If you ever want to see the real power of community, look at the Southern Charity Hospital.

It is not a story I could ever tell properly, but it is a story built entirely on people. On belief. On compassion. On locals deciding that something mattered enough to act.

It shows that communities can be stronger than circumstances, stronger than obstacles, and stronger than the assumption that a problem is simply too big to be solved.

Not by money alone, or buildings, or policy, but by people coming together to turn loss into care and adversity into something that helps others when they need it most.

Which brings me to this.

Before you fire off an angry email about how the grass outside the community hall is overgrown and the council will not bloody mow it, pause for a moment.

The energy it takes to write that email is exactly the same energy it would take to message a group of locals and say, hey, what if we sort this ourselves.

If there are 12 of us and one of us mows it once a month, suddenly it is not such a big job.

Suddenly, it is manageable. Suddenly, it becomes something shared.

Communities do not run on buildings. They run on people. On effort. On small acts that add up.

On someone saying, “I’ll give it a go.” On someone else saying, “I can help”.

And on more people saying yes than no.

So yes, I still love a community hall. But more than that, I love the people who make it matter.

The CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and the quietly generous humans who turn up, chip in, and keep our places alive.

Because communities are our power.

And they are driven by people like us.