Upcoming Event
2026 Ruritan National Convention
Starts: January 23, 2026
Ends: January 24, 2026
Mark your calendar. The 2026 Ruritan National Convention is in Lexington, KY.
Leadership
2025 Ruritan President
Rebecca Lane
Ruritan National
Executive Director
Sarah Kelly
2025 Foundation President
Clinton Guy Cox
Members
Looking for information about benefits, supplies ordering, your MMS login, and other resources?
Find Your Club
Want to join or get in touch with your local club? This section lists clubs with active websites. If you don’t find a club in your area, email service@ruritan.org and we can check our map of clubs for more info.
Foundation
The Ruritan National Foundation provides financial assistance to qualified individuals and groups for educational, charitable, and benevolent activities.
What is Ruritan?
Ruritan National has nearly 25,000 members throughout the United States that work to improve more than 900 local communities. Since the organization’s beginning in 1928, Ruritan Clubs have served America with Fellowship, Goodwill, and Community Service. Ruritan is a civic service organization made up of local clubs in urban areas, small towns and rural communities.
What do Ruritan clubs do?
Ruritan’s purpose is to create a better understanding among people and through volunteer community service, making America’s communities better places in which to live and work. The slogan of Ruritan is “Fellowship, Goodwill and Community Service.” Club membership represents a cross-section of the community in which the club serves, and is not restrictive with regard to occupation, social position, or any other specific criteria.
What separates Ruritan from similar organizations?
Unlike most civic service organizations, Ruritan rarely has national programs. Rather, each club surveys its own community as to the needs of that community and then works to meet some of those needs. Nearly all clubs work locally with FFA, 4-H and other organizations serving youth. Nearly one in every three Ruritan clubs sponsors a Boy or Girl Scout unit.
Contact
Mailing Address
Ruritan National, Inc.
PO Box 487
Dublin, VA 24084
Phone
(540) 674-5431
Ruritan’s History
The first Ruritan Club was chartered May 21, 1928, in Holland, Virginia. Since that first club, Ruritan has grown throughout the United States of America, and in doing so, has become “America’s Leading Community Service Organization.”
Tom Downing of Suffolk, Virginia, and Jack Gwaltney of Holland, Virginia, are known as the co-founders of Ruritan. Gwaltney and Downing recognized the need for an organization where community leaders could meet and discuss ways to make their community a better place in which to live.
The name “Ruritan” was suggested by Daisy Nurney, a reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper, and the club’s charter members unanimously adopted “Ruritan” as the organization’s name. The word is a combination of the Latin words for open country “ruri” and small town “tan,” interpreted as pertaining to rural and small town life.
How can I contribute?
If you’d like to contribute, consider a donation to the Ruritan National Foundation or joining your local club. The foundation provides financial assistance to qualified individuals and groups for educational, charitable, and benevolent activities.