Greetings!

Congratulations once again to our many award winners. It was such an honor for me to be a part of our awards presentations and to see people's faces when they found out their agencies were recognizing their work. There is something special about walking across a big stage in front of all your peers that you'll never forget. I hope that next year, you will nominate your peers and help us to recognize those who go above and beyond in their service. In recognizing the best of the best, we also hope to motivate others to constantly strive to reach that level of recognition. Now is a great time to rededicate yourself to your agency, community and profession.

The conference was a success, with strong registration numbers and exhibit numbers and high-quality educational sessions. I am especially grateful for our Joint Conference Committee who worked so hard to make the event successful. These volunteers work so hard to make sure everything goes smoothly and that attendees and exhibitors get their needs met. Thanks again, JCC! Thanks also to Dina Kartch and Sue Triphapn who lead our IPRA and IAPD staff teams through the conference. They are incredibly talented conference directors.

If you were at the IPRA Annual Business Meeting, you heard the Foundation Chair, Mike Clark, talking about our current foundation project, the Pay it Forward Campaign. In the last couple of years, IPRA has worked hard to restore the donations that were raised years ago to purchase a building and were later used when the building was sold and IPRA needed the funds for operational expenses. Today the entire fund is restored at $245,000. The fund was transferred out of IPRA's accounts into those of the Foundation, so it is entirely separate from IPRA's spending and safely protected. The Foundation board has determined that it will be an endowment, meaning that the fund will remain intact and will never be spent, but the interest from the fund will be used for scholarships for students and professionals and can also be used to offset costs of member benefits, such as the Education Institute. Our Pay it Forward Campaign is intended to help us grow the endowment fund from $245,000 up to $500,000. Every dollar donated will be protected and will be permanently restricted. The higher the endowment fund, the more interest it earns and the more good we can do with it. Remember, expenditures will stay in the field of parks and recreation. In November, we sent letters to all retirees, Executive Directors and professionals who are current members. Thank you to those who have already made donations. I would strongly encourage others to send your donations. IPRA and the foundation are 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations and donations are tax deductible as a charitable expense. If you lost your letter just mail a check to the "IPR Foundation." As a consequence of keeping the foundation and IPRA separate, we are currently unable to accept foundation donations electronically.

If you were at the Annual Business Meeting you saw our new Chair, Allison Niemela, and I share our plans for IPRA’s future. There was excitement in the air as we reflected on the great opportunities ahead of us. IPRA is at an incredible turning point; my predecessors and the IPRA members, leaders and staff have successfully turned IPRA around put us firmly back on solid ground. As a collective, we have learned from the experience and put into place many protections to ensure that IPRA will only move forward from here. Now we are positioned to safely turn our attention to our future instead of our past. We are all coming together toward our new goal of taking IPRA to the next level of service, growth, value and access. I look forward to working with Allison and with each of you toward meeting this goal.

If you have questions about any of these items, please feel free to email me at debbie@ilipra.org. To the IPRA folks in southern Illinois, I’ll be seeing you in just a couple weeks for my tour through southern Illinois’ park and recreation community. See you all soon!

- Debbie Trueblood, CAE
IPRA Executive Director