by Joe Attwood, President and Dave Waggoner, Internship Committee Chairman
January, 1997
Please take the few minutes
necessary to read this article as I feel the discussion may be important
to future Chapter programs.
We, the membership, spend freely of our time and efforts to produce
revenues from certain activities such as the annual meeting and the IAFC.
We also collect membership dues and solicit corporate sponsorship monies.
These undertakings have, as a given purpose, the raising of monies. Our
sole intent in having cash balances is that we might be philanthropic
within our interest area. The membership and Board approve certain
activities for which monies are allocated.
While we work hard to raise the money, and allocate it to good programs,
there seems to be few tangible results. The intern
program is a very good example of where we want to do the right
things, have the resources to help and yet, find little interest. I have
requested Dave Waggoner, who works tirelessly for the interns, use the
rest of this column to discuss our current program circumstances in hopes
that a greater understanding will result in more participation.
Thanks, Joe. As the
NWAAAE Chapter's new Intern Program Chairman, one of my duties is to
oversee and recommend the disbursement of an Intern Grant Fund. The budget
for this fund has been $3,000 per year for the past several years. It has
been disbursed in individual $1,000 grants to large and small airports.
The following airports have received grants recently: Missoula, Seattle,
Tacoma, Paine Field, Jeffco, Pueblo and Cheyenne. Some of the airports
used the grant to provide some recompense to an otherwise unpaid intern.
At Paine Field we used it as a matching fund to support sending our
interns to AAAE and WAMA conferences.
The 1996 NWAAAE Intern Grant notices at our meeting and in the newsletter
didn't generate much response—only two airports requested funding. We
allocated a total of $1,500 to these two requests and kept $1,500 in
reserve. The Board will review the program at the meeting in SLC February
27 and provide some direction to me on how the funds should be used in the
future. If you would like to participate or have suggestions, please
contact Joe Attwood at (406) 727-3404 ext. 392 or me, Dave Waggoner, at
(206) 353-2110 ext. 2224.