It’s been said that ‘With great power comes great responsibility.” Bryan Junge, with CPA Consulting Group, LLP may not agree that he has a lot of “power,” but he does view it as his responsibility to give back to the community of which he is a part. Because of this, Bryan recently began serving on the Board of Directors for Mercer Family Resource Center.
Mercer Family Resource Center, per its website, “provides education, counseling, and prevention services that build stronger and healthier youth and families in our community.”
MFRC, formerly known as ‘Mercer House,’ offers a variety of services to the community of Natrona County. It provides adult drug and alcohol education, community case management, family, and parenting programs (including Love and Logic classes), mental health first aid, youth classes, and more. Mercer Family Resource Center also offers CHINS (Child in Need of Supervision) services and is a major partner of both the Youth Empowerment Council and the Natrona County Prevention Coalition.
Bryan has always admired what Mercer Family Resource Center does for the community, so when the opportunity came to serve on the board and offer his skills, experience, and expertise, he jumped at it.
Bryan formally joined the board in the treasurer role in February of 2023 and while he has only been on the board a few months, he has gained an even larger appreciation for what Mercer Family Resource Center does.
“Mercer is a well-established organization that’s been running successfully for many years in the community,” he said. “It helps a lot of different people, from youth to adults, to families, and more. It’s an organization that has so many programs and classes and counseling services; they just really make a big difference in our community.”
Bryan was looking for a board in which he could be actively involved. He didn’t just want to attend a meeting once a month and tell people he was a board member. He wanted to use his own gifts to make Mercer Family Resource Center even better.
“I was excited to be able to join a board where I can provide whatever input I might have in order to help keep them running successfully and keep being able to serve our community,” he stated. “So, it was really just kind of a great opportunity for me as well as, hopefully, a good opportunity for them.”
Bryan said one of the biggest missions of the board is to ensure there is sufficient funding to help keep the myriad of classes, services, and programs that Mercer offers afloat. Nonprofit work is hard and, oftentimes, nonprofit organizations live and die by the kindness of strangers. Therefore grants, donations and fundraisers are major components of their success.
Mercer Family Resource Center’s biggest fundraiser is its annual ‘Dancing with the Stars of Casper’ event. This year, the event is Elvis-themed and it’s poised to be an enormous success. Dancing with the Stars of Casper – Elvis Night is happening on Saturday, October 21 at the Ford Wyoming Center, beginning at 6pm.
“This is the really big fundraising event that Mercer does annually,” Bryan stated. “I actually haven’t been to one yet, so I’m really looking forward to that.”
Events like DWTS are designed to raise money and awareness for all that Mercer Family Resource Center has to offer. These daily, weekly, and monthly classes and programs are designed to make the community better, stronger, and safer for all who inhabit it.
“I’ve been very impressed with just how many different programs, classes and services that Mercer offers,” Bryan shared. “I have been especially impressed by all of the ones for kids. There are several programs that focus on corrective behavior in hopes that intervention now will help guide these kids to a better path moving forward.”
Bryan said another program he’s extremely impressed by is the Youth Empowerment Council.
“YEC is a great program for youth that really want to be active members of their community,” he said. “It allows these kids opportunities to get involved with similar minded and aged individuals to make a difference. Having so many programs that focus on youth is only going to make our community a better place.”
That’s what Bryan hopes he is doing by serving on the Board of Directors for Mercer Family Resource Center. He hopes he’s making his community even better. He hopes he’s making a difference. He hopes he’s adding something. And, best of all, he’s not alone. Many of his peers within CPA Consulting Group, LLP also serve on various boards throughout the community, offering their time, talent, and resources to a wide array of organizations.
“We’re all members of this community,” Bryan said. “We all live here. We all work here. And we want to do more than just prepare tax returns and give business consulting to our clients. We want to be active members of the community, and we take a lot of pride in doing that. There’s no spoken rule that we have to serve on a board or anything like that. It’s just one of those things that naturally happens, because people are wanting to give back and be involved. That’s one of the cool things about working for CPA Consulting Group – we have a lot of people that are wanting to be active in the community and help make a difference.”
That’s exactly what Bryan and many of his contemporaries are doing. It’s also what Mercer Family Resource Center is doing, on a daily basis.
“Mercer is a resource not only for children, but for adults as well,” Bryan said. “It’s such a great resource for all in our community and it can only happen with donations, grants and help from the community. It really is making a difference in Natrona County, day in and day out and we need to do whatever we can to make sure that this organization and others like it can continue to operate for many years to come.”
To find out more about Mercer Family Resource Center, or to make a donation, visit their website or check out their Facebook page.