The Franklinton Volunteer Fire Department held their second Community Day Saturday.

The event, held at the fire station on 11th Street, included chicken plate lunches, games, giveaways and a chance for the community to mingle with firefighters.

Chief Chad Manning said the event was also an important fundraiser for the all-volunteer agency.

“We’re not in it to get rich,” he said. “We do these things to raise money to purchase things that our budget can’t purchase.”

Manning explained that the city does have a budget for the fire department, but that goes toward maintaining equipment and other operational costs. The fundraisers have helped pay for new equipment, including a responder vehicle for medical calls.

So while the fire department holds community fundraisers, the money they raise gets reinvested.

“Everything we do goes back into the community, in one way or another,” he said.

The chief said the Saturday event went well, though the rain didn’t help matters.

“We didn’t have as good of turnout as what we wanted because the rain, or the threat of rain, ran a lot of people off. But our chicken dinners turned out pretty well,” he said.

Jodi Lasalle, whose husband is a volunteer firefighter, said she enjoyed the event.

“I think it’s great that the community has an opportunity to come out and see what the fire department is about and see where their tax dollars are going,” she said.

Although it was the second community day, the first was held in 2010.

“It was a pretty good and a success, and we kind of just let it drop for a few years and we probably should have kept it going but we didn’t,” he said.

Manning said he hopes the fundraisers will be more regular in the future, but he pointed out they’re not easy to organize.

“It takes a lot of manpower and a lot of man-hours to make this happen,” he said. “We have a lot of support from our local businesses … Everybody seems to want to come by and help out by giving us door prizes and things like that to give away.

“The smoke hasn’t cleared for us to really sit down and talk about what we’ll do next, but we would like to do this again.”