At Kearney Elks Lodge #984, "WE GIVE BACK TO OUR COMMUNITY". Our contributions have been over $2.3 MILLION DOLLARS in charitable contributions to the Greater KEARNEY/BUFFALO Community since our inception as an ELKS LODGE. We pride ourselves on being an organization founded in social and service. We host Burger Night year round on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays along with a variety of other social events including St. Patty's Day, steak night, karaoke, casino night, cream can dinner and tournaments of golf and pitch. Through grants from the Elks National Foundation we host Warm Welcome to the Library providing a new, colorful, warm coat and a new book to Head Start students along with offering library tours to their families. We battle food insecurities by providing funding to Crossroads Mission, East Lawn Food Pantry, and the Hanny Arram Center for Excellence student food pantry. We deliver care packages to veterans in long term care facilities in Central Nebraska each year on Veteran's Day. This year, we delivered to 144 veterans. Kearney Elks Lodge #984 supports the Central Nebraska Veteran's Home activities by hosting bingo once a month, funding and volunteering for Oktoberfest, and the Fourth of July fireworks. Healthy, happy, drug free youth is passion for the Kearney Elks. We provide drug awareness materials to youth in our schools during Red Ribbon Week, during Trick or Treat on the bricks and during our RX Drug Take Back events held twice annually. We host both the local and regional Hoop Shoot competitions encouraging kids to dig in and get gritty in the quest to make 25 basketball free throws in a row. This year we scored over 150 youth in our annual Soccer Shoot. In addition, we provide over $3,000 in local scholarships to area youth and we provide funds to local families for "Cranial Helmets" for infants/youth through our State Elks Major Project. We are a truly American organization who founded Flag Day and celebrates it every year. We also sponsor an Americanism essay contest for middle school students each spring.