“Here’s to the ladies who lunch,” sniffed Stephen Sondheim in his Broadway hit from the musical Company. He poked fun at well-to-do women who gathered at luncheons, ostensibly to raise money for charities, but who were more likely dishing gossip.

Despite that perception, Woman’s Clubs members — then and now — don’t have time for such trivial pursuits. On the menu for these ladies who lunch: community service.

Miami-Dade is home to some of the oldest woman’s clubs in the state. The first, the Coconut Grove Woman’s Club, dates to 1891, five years before Miami was incorporated in 1896. Founded as the Housekeepers Club by Flora McFarlane, one of the area’s earliest teachers, the group included the wives of the Munroe, Frow, Peacock and Newbold pioneer families. Other members were wives of Bahamian lighthouse keepers.

“The inclusiveness they had in 1891 was pretty amazing,” said South Florida historian Arva Moore Parks, the acting director and chief curator for the Coral Gables Museum.

The Grove club helped establish Plymouth Congregational Church and became active with the woman’s suffragette movement and supporting World War II orphans.

“There was no road to Miami, no railroad to Miami. That particular club created the ambience and special character of Coconut Grove, which remains to this day,” said Parks, who notes that Mary Munroe, the club’s third president in 1893, acquired Paradise Key in the Everglades, which became a state park in 1916. “The beginning of what became Everglades National Park came out of the club.’’

A bit later, the Miami Woman’s Club, made up of the wives of the merchants and early leaders of the city, opened in 1900 on land donated by Henry Flagler. That property, which now houses a Walgreen’s on Biscayne Boulevard near 36th Street, was sold during the building boom of 1925-26. The club relocated to its current home near Biscayne Bay off 17th Street. The building, circa 1925, once housed the first library in Miami. The club is trying to raise $8 million to restore the property, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“We’re trying to bring it into the 21st Century. This is not just a place where ladies go to lunch,” said board member Shirley Pardon.

Indeed, women’s clubs across the country, organized under the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, were instrumental in establishing 75 percent of the nation’s libraries and helped pass the first child labor laws, said Heike Leibkuchler, president of the Coco Plum Woman’s Club in Coral Gables, also a historic structure.

Socialites Lua Curtiss and Lillie Bright, wives of Hialeah and Miami Springs developers Glenn Curtiss and James Bright, respectively, opened The Woman’s Club of Hialeah in 1922. Dues were 25 cents to join and the main goal was to build a library. Eventually, the first library evolved from the living room of the club’s first president into the JFK Library in 1965, where it remains today on West 49th Street.

Today, the clubs take on specific projects. Hialeah works with Angel’s Reach, which helps children with autism. Coco Plum has partnerships with Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity. The Miami club works with victims of domestic violence and foster children.