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Greetings from the desk of the President: 22 Aug 2022
Welcome to our members of this organization. I am Doug Schulz CMSgt (ret) from Nebraska /South Dakota. For those of you who have been in our association for a long time I am familiar to you. I was the national president from 2015 to 2019 and have been the president ex offico for the past three years. Prior to our general membership meeting which we held via zoom on Aug 13th, I found out that our President Alec Cawlfield was not running for reelection and the 1st Vice President Eric Vickrey was also not planning on running for President so I decided to put my hat in the ring. No other member ran for this office so I was elected by unanamous ballot. The following paragraph documents my various experience in this association.
I have held every Chapter office at my local unit until I retired from the ANG. My first position on the National Board of Directors was DAL Ways and Means. Then I became the Treasurer for quite a few years.Then I was off the board for a few years due to my job with the ANG. Once I retired I became the Region 3 director and then became the 1st Vice President for a few years and then the President for four years.
. I have seen many changes to our association, however the biggest change has been the continued reduction of members and chapters. Despite the Board of Directors continued encouargement local chapters are continuing to go inactive. I don't attribute this to our group dynamic, but I firmly believe it is primarily due to the constant requirement for unit members to mobilize in support of one major conflict after another. When I was the Chief of Aircraft Maintenance we were either preparing for a major deployment, being deployed, or getting ready for another inspection. The biggest complaint that I heard from the guardsmen was that they didn't even have time to learn their jobs before they were getting deployed. So it is no wonder that when the airmen come back from a deployment the last thing they want to do is give up more of their time to an organization whose primary goal is to encourage members to complete their PME.
So I believe that our association has to move into the next phase of its life. We obviously don't have very many active chapters in the country, but we still seem to get scholarship applications for the all important education dollars that we have continued to provide over all these years. And we were challenged by the Director of the ANG to move our organization into that direction. So with your help, we hope to continue to offer the scholarshps into the future. But we cannot do that without some of you providing us with some fund raising ideas or corporate sponsorships. It is just as simple as talking with business people that you come in contact with asking them if they are interested in contributing dollars to a non profit licensed organization that provides scholarship dollars each year to a member of this organization and to dependants of members of this group. We annually provide $6400 to those individuals. We get those funds from membership dollars, fund raisers, and donations. If you have any questions about donations or wish to learn more about our fund raiser programs you can contact our Ways and Means Director CMSgt(ret ) Sue Turner . Her contact info is on this web site.
We have moved our organization into more of an alumni group with proposed changes to our Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws. We have completed the first reading of those changes and they are currently being reviewed by our attorney to ensure they comply with the laws governing our non profit group. In the future we will be scheduling another National Meeting via Zoom to have the second reading of those changes and final vote to adopt them. We will be letting everyone know by facebook and this website of the date and time for that meeting. I hope to see you there.
Doug Schulz CMSgt (ret)
President NCOAGA