When a representative of the Working Ranch Cowboys Foundation called Laban Tubbs, director of the Ranch & Feedlot Operations Program at Clarendon College in Clarendon, Texas, and told him that the Foundation wanted to give the program some financial help, Tubbs was excited. He immediately began to think about things the program needed, such as a few supplies, a jacket sponsor for all the students and maybe some scholarship help. That’s when the Foundation representative told him that all that was fine, but they were talking about a significant grant, maybe $50,000. Then, Tubbs got really excited.

            The Working Ranch Cowboys Foundation is the benevolent arm of the Working Ranch Cowboys Association, which is headquartered in Amarillo, Texas, and produces the World Championship Ranch Rodeo each November in Amarillo. The Foundation has as its goal to provide assistance to ranch cowboys and their families in times of need. This has been carried out through the Foundation’s crisis fund, which, to date, has distributed more than $275,000 to ranch families in need, and through the scholarship fund, which provides financial assistance to family members of the working ranch cowboy who wants to attend a college or university, or a vocational program. To date, more than $160,000 has been awarded in scholarships.

            “The association was started years ago with the intent of furthering our western heritage and helping the working cowboy on the ranch,” said Sam Daube, president of the Foundation. “Then we started the Foundation, and it has the duty of dispersing the funds that the WRCA generates. Through our scholarships, we’ve had lots of kids graduate and go back to the ranch with a college education, and through our crisis fund we’ve been able to help some families through some really bad times. Now, we’re able to make a bigger impact with this grant to the Ranch & Feedlot Operations program. They are educating kids to work on a ranch, and by making a grant to that program we are able to help a lot of people.”

            The Ranch & Feedlot Operations program is a work force educational program that is structured to help young people get an introduction into the ranching and feedlot industries.

            “Clarendon College was seeing a lot of rural kids who weren’t going to college but needed some sort of education to help them get started with their lives and their careers,” said Jason Green, an instructor with the program.  “We start out with basic animal health, basic nutrition, basic feeds and feeding, marketing, anything that you would probably learn while working for an operation for a year or two.

            “Probably 80 percent of the students coming into this program have what you would call a cowboy background,” Green said.  “They grew up on a ranch, and they know that working on a ranch is what they’re going to do the rest of their lives. Some of them already have jobs. Sometimes the ranches pay their tuitions so they will come here and learn something and then go back to the ranch and go to work.”

            To complete the Ranch & Feedlot Operation program takes two semesters. However, Clarendon College also offers an RFO Associate Degree, where the student takes math, English and science courses in addition to the agriculture courses taken in the RFO program. The student graduates with an associate degree after two years of course work, and this provides a good basic program for a student who wants to transfer to a major university and obtain a bachelors degree.

            Green said that each student pays, in addition to his tuition, a professional services fee that goes toward artificial insemination schools, training clinics and things like that. He says that they always run short of funds for those services before the end of the year, and they plan to use part of the WRCF grant to supplement that.

            “There are also lots of travel expenses,” Green said. “We have two vans that hold 14 passengers each, and this year we went 6,500 miles. So we can use some help on those expenses, and we’re also going to use some of the money to help boost our scholarship fund. We give 13 scholarships a year, and we need some help in that area right now, too.”

            Daube says that the grant is actually a matching grant. In order for the program to receive all of it, the school must raise another $50,000.

            “I know they plan on matching that grant,” he said, “and that will give the program $100,000 to work with.

            “The number one thing we want this money to do,” Daube said, “is directly impact those students and get them as good of an education as possible, and we want to make sure the program continues and grows. And, of course, we want people to understand what the Working Ranch Cowboys Foundation is doing, so they will continue to support it.”

Story written by Jim Jennings