Exchange Club discontinues its fair

After a decade of setting up, the Columbia County Exchange Club Spring Fair won't happen next year.

Exchange Club officials announced last week that they have decided to cancel the fair, held each year during Masters Week, in favor of holding smaller fund raising events throughout the year.

"We've been doing this for 10 years, and we just wanted to take a step back and look at other avenues to raise money," Exchange Club President Mark Ross said. "We want to explore other options."

The fair was the club's sole fund-raiser. The nonprofit group raised money for the Child Advocacy Center, a local child-abuse prevention organization, and other community-service projects.

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Ross said the fair raised between $10,000 and $25,000 annually, but he added that the amount of work to stage the fair was too much with too little help.

"It's a 10-day fair, and there are a lot of man-hours involved with that," he said. "It's a great event, but we want to look at fund raising events that are less time involved.

"The fair was held during Masters Week, which is a tough time anyway. There were usually just two or three members that were there constantly, and that's really not fair to those members."

The club's hope, Ross said, is that the Exchange Club can hold more events throughout the year and more evenly distribute the amount of work and time it takes to stage and organize the activities.

"We want to have the best bang for our time," he said. "We hope we can do that by spreading out the work."