OGALLALA -- Theodore Roosevelt is credited say people won't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

A group of women in Keith County meet to show the community how much they care. The group is modeled after a national organization that encourages women to support their communities, according to Shawna Knudsen of Ogallala.

"100 Women Who Care is actually a national, I guess organization that ... we just looked it up. It started in 2006 by one woman who who saw a need in her community," Knudsen said.

The concept was adopted by some women in Ogallala and started their own chapter. Knudsen and Kelly Coggins are part of the steering committee for the chapter in Ogallala.

"Our Ogallala chapter is just based off of their model. There's chapters all over the country. I think it said there are 900 chapters. But, basically what we do is we meet four times a year, for one hour, and we listen to three different charitable organizations from our community that have been nominated by our membership. After they do their presentation, we vote. Whoever gets the most votes from our membership will receive $100 checks from each woman in our organization," Knudsen said.

She said each award has exceeded $10,000. Ogallala's chapter is in it's fifth year.

"We've been doing this since January of 2020. We've raised $192,000 so far in five years. We did miss two meetings because of COVID, so we've had 18 meetings. After the meeting we had this week we will definitely be over $200,000. All that goes directly back in our community," she said.

She said the framework is deliberately loose. Awarded organizations must be from within Keith County, or serve the residents of its communities.  Knudsen said they have seen nearly 40 presentations. She said the committee early decided to consider organizations, not individuals in need. Recipients include the Paxton Library, Keith County Historical Society, the "Backpack Program," Ogallala FFA, the Food Pantry and the county fire departments.

"There is a group that's trying to purchase and renovate the local movie theater. They just won the funding for that, so that's pretty exciting. They were, I think, really blown away that they won that. And actually its really fun to watch the presenters give their presentation for the charity that's asking for donations, and to see that they won. More times than not, they are completely blown away that they just received $10,000," Kelly Coggins said.