The first President, Dr. Mary Campbell, said that the Club was the "woman's arm of government" at a time when few women in the nation had voting rights. In the minutes of 1907, the Club passed a resolution in which they desribed themselves as "relatives" of male citizens.
Many community amenities we all take for granted today were initiated and fought for by Club members.
- They convinced City Hall to install sewers to prevent typhoid that had decimated other towns.
- They purchased, planted, watered, pruned street trees.
- They discouraged the use of trees as hitching posts.
- The Club's Village Improvement Committee recommended park locations and landscaping.
- They sponsored town clean-up days.
- They founded the Palo Alto library.
Founding the library took countless hours of fund raising, holding Book Socials and applying for a grant to build the first town library. They rented a space, staffed it with Club volunteers, and donated the first books.
Every year, schools were high on the Club agenda. The Club donated art for classrooms, petitioned for better pay for teachers, paid all the expenses of a gymnasium, and argued for free textbooks. To this day, the Club has a scholarship fund. At the request of teachers, the Club hosted Home and School meetings—the predecessor of the PTA. In 1909, the Club nominated for Board of School Trustees Mrs. C.L. Place, the first woman elected to any Palo Alto office.
The Club responded then and now to crises. During the typhoid epidemic of 1903, they delivered food to the sick. In 1906, they helped San Francisco earthquake refugees. They provided hospitality to Camp Fremont soldiers and their families during World War I. In 1989, the Club sent money and supplies to Watsonville, hard-hit by the earthquake. Responding to the hurricane relief efforts in 2005, the Club is engaged in fund raising to support on-going needs in Mississippi and Louisiana.
When cultural opportunities were few, the Club was a center for art, music, literature, and ideas. Renowned speakers included:
- Stanford President Dr. David Starr Jordan
- Rev. Walter Hays
- Dr. Cielia Mosher of Stanford who spoke about women's health issues
- Ida Husted Harper, Susan B. Anthony's biographer
