Sherman Noon Lions open Wednesday meeting in the district Gainesville shares

Jennifer Rowe called the Sherman Noon Lions meeting to order Wednesday, and Jeff Austin gave the prayer before the Pledge of Allegiance, according to a post on the club's Facebook page. The post said club members and a guest speaker attended.

The meeting happened across the county line, but it belongs to the same Lions structure Gainesville does. Texas Lions maps both Grayson County, whose seat is Sherman, and Cooke County, whose seat is Gainesville, to District 2-E2. The district roster puts the Sherman Noon club and the Gainesville Lions Club together in Zone 1, and lists both as meeting Wednesdays at noon, Sherman at the Golden Corral on West U.S. Highway 82 and Gainesville at The Neu Ranch House.

The rosters also record when each club started. District 2-E2 lists the Sherman club as Club 954, and a 2018 district directory gives its charter date as June 21, 1928. The roster dates Gainesville's Club 934 to June 11, 1948. Zone 1 also carries the Sherman Evening Lions, chartered in 1958 and meeting Monday evenings at the same Golden Corral, and the Whitesboro Lions, chartered in 1991 and meeting the second and fourth Thursday of the month at the Whitesboro Housing Authority.

What the weekly lunch hour pays for turns up in federal tax records. Sherman Noon Lions Charities Inc. told the IRS on its 2023 Form 990-EZ that its Feast for Families program carried a week's worth of food and toys to 100 low-income families, reaching about 400 people, at a program cost of roughly $5,100. The same filing lists Rowe as the charity's 1st vice president, serving without pay. The IRS index of 2024 electronic filings identifies the organization by EIN 75-2911793 as a 2023-period 990-EZ filer.

| Sherman Noon Lions Charities Inc., 2023 Form 990-EZ | Reported |

| --- | --- |

| Total revenue | $126,973 |

| Total expenses | $10,260 |

| End-of-year net assets | $122,259 |

| Feast for Families program expenses | $5,118 |

| Families served / people reached | 100 / about 400 |

The filing shows the charity took in far more than it spent during the year and carried the balance forward.

The club sits inside a much larger association. Lions Clubs International says it has 1.4 million members in 50,000 clubs, and describes its mission as empowering clubs, volunteers and partners to improve health and wellbeing, strengthen communities, support people in need through humanitarian service and grants, and encourage peace and international understanding. Its foundation says it has awarded more than $1.3 billion in grant funding since 1968.

The district roster shows the same weekly pattern on the Cooke County side of the line, where the Gainesville club is listed as meeting at the same Wednesday noon hour.