The Elkhart County 4-H Fair has always needed its community. Its community has never let it down.
Every July, it looks something like this. The Elkhart County 4-H Fair is open. The parking crews have been in position since before the first car arrived, the ticket booths are staffed, and the information booth is ready for whatever questions come first. Over at the Youth Ag Center, a volunteer is helping a four-year-old climb onto a pedal tractor and pointing her toward the course ahead, a miniature version of the journey from farm to grocery store that kids have been riding through for years. The child grips the handlebars and sets off, completely focused. The volunteer watches, smiling.
It runs because thousands of volunteers in Elkhart County care deeply about what it means to their community.
The Elkhart County 4-H Fair is the largest county fair in Indiana and one of the largest in the country. More than 200,000 guests enter the gates in Goshen over nine days each year. The 380-acre fairgrounds has more than 70 structures, a grandstand that hosts national touring artists, a full carnival midway, livestock barns, competitive exhibition halls, and a daily schedule that runs from 8 a.m. until nearly midnight. More than 3,800 young people compete as 4-H exhibitors each year. And the whole thing is run by a nonprofit organization governed by a volunteer board of more than 130 members and supported by roughly 10 full-time, year-round staff.
A Role for Every Passion: How the Fair Finds Its People
The fair works because it has something for everyone, and that is as true for the people who run it as for those who attend it.
The Farm to Market exhibit requires roughly 50 volunteers per day for all 9 days, people who love being around young children. The grounds crew that cleans up after the grandstand concert each night tends to draw people who find satisfaction in quiet, physical work and the reward of leaving something better than they found it. The information booths and ticket gates suit people who are energized by interaction. The volunteer board, with its 130-plus members, draws people who want to be more deeply involved.
No two volunteers look alike. Retirees who have been coming back for thirty years work alongside teenagers here for the first time. Church groups and scout troops come together, service clubs return to staff the same booth, and fitness classes trade their Tuesday morning workout for a shift at the fair. Some hear about it from a neighbor. Others grew up watching their parents and eventually stepped in beside them.
What they share is not a particular skill or background but a connection to this place and a genuine desire to be part of what it produces for the community.
When 2026 Fair Board President Jason Wogoman revealed this year’s theme at the annual Fair Board Banquet, he was direct about what “Driven by Purpose, Powered by Community” means. “The fair does not succeed because of one person or one organization,” he said. “It succeeds because thousands of people come together with a shared purpose.” Wogoman is a third-generation board member who has spent his career as a firefighter and small-business owner, witnessing the impact that purpose and community can have on people.
Showing Up for Each Other: Volunteers at the Heart of Fair Week
Part of why volunteers keep coming back is that the fair has learned how to make them feel their time is worth giving.
The fair provides sunscreen, bottled water, and shade umbrellas to parking lot volunteers exposed to the July heat and sun. When trash collection routes were covering too much ground, they added wagons to ease the load. These adjustments are the kind that tell a person their experience matters. But what keeps volunteers coming back year after year is the sense of belonging to something larger than themselves and of contributing to an event that their neighbors, children, and community genuinely love.
What the Elkhart County Fair Would Lose Without Its Volunteers
None of this is guaranteed, and the fair knows it.
What the fair has built over a very long time is a culture that makes people want to come back. When you give people work that fits who they are, when you treat their time as valuable, when you connect them to a purpose they can feel, people return year after year, and they bring others with them.
Acts of Service has a significant role in this culture. When the fair needs volunteers, whether for a push ahead of the season, a shift running short mid-week, or a last-minute gap, AOS connects people who want to help with the places that need them. The connection goes beyond staffing shifts. When the fair needed specialized help building out one of its exhibits, AOS helped connect them with engineers from a local organization willing to donate their time and materials. Across Elkhart County, AOS ensures that people who want to give their time, in whatever form it takes, can find their way to the places that need it most. The fair is one of many organizations that has leaned on that connection over the years.
As Wogoman puts it, “Volunteerism here is not just about helping at an event. It is about continuing a tradition of service and community that has been passed down for generations.” The volunteer who watched a four-year-old pedal her tractor on opening morning is part of a line of people that stretches back a very long way, and with care and intention, will stretch forward just as far.
The 2026 fair runs July 24 through August 1. Volunteer and fundraising opportunities are available year-round for individuals, families, sports teams, youth groups, schools, and community organizations.
More information is available at 4hfair.org.