President's Message
AAEA Announces Important Changes to The Foundation
Prominent AAEA Members React to the AAEA Trust Announcement
Otto Doering
Purdue University and AAEA Past President
"I believe that the public activities of the AAEA are critically important to the whole profession. We must continue to build a broadly based reputation, support our students and young professionals, and be increasingly relevant through outreach and direct engagement to the real world that supports us. The AAEA Trust promises to provide the essential long term vehicle for the support and continuation of these efforts."
Richard E. Just
University of Maryland and AAEA Past President
"The AAEA Trust also offers a great opportunity, particularly for established members, to support the future vitality of the AAEA and share some of the rich dividends of AAEA involvement by supporting participation of graduate students and young professionals. But I am most excited about the new approach that allows members to influence and leverage the future directions of Trust support of AAEA activities in harmony with member interests."
Walt Armbruster
President Emeritus, Farm Foundation, and AAEA Outreach Committee Chair
"The profession must disseminate its applied research to public and private sector decision makers and the broader public to impact the future of agricultural, food, resource, and rural community issues. AAEA Outreach products supported through the Trust—Choices, Policy Issues, and the Shared Outreach Materials Library—play a critical role in accomplishing this for the benefit of all our members."
Jon Brandt
North Carolina State University and C-FARE Chair
"The Trust provides an ongoing opportunity to invest in strengthening the national presence of our profession, particularly in helping to craft policy in Washington. The Council on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (C-FARE) provides opportunities to interact with and inform policy and decision makers, and to demonstrate the value of ag and applied economics research. Supporting the C-FARE link with Washington is vital to convey our relevance."
Dear Colleagues,
On behalf of the AAEA Executive Board, I am writing to you today to announce important new initiatives that include a new way for members to have a substantial influence on how the Association’s discretionary expenditures are allocated: the AAEA Trust and the Centennial Trust Initiative. The overarching goals of these initiatives are to invigorate donations to the AAEA endowment by providing members with new ways and new incentives for giving, and to create a long-run sustainable fiscal foundation for maintaining an attractive cost of membership for those members who prefer only a basic level of Association services, while also providing expanded opportunities, and a sustainable mechanism of funding, for the provision of public goods and services for those members who prefer that AAEA support such additional activities.
Implementation of the plan will involve four basic changes.
First, for reasons of fiduciary responsibility and compliance with changing IRS definitions/regulations for 501(c)(3) entities, the AAEA Foundation has been renamed the AAEA Trust.
Second, the Trust will now be used to finance all public good activities supported by AAEA on behalf of the profession, consistent with the initial founding principles and strategic objectives of the AAEA Foundation (now Trust).
Third, to facilitate alignment of support for public goods financed by the Trust with members’ effective preferences and interests, member-donors will henceforth have the opportunity to direct how they would like Trust expenditures, supported by their donations, to be allocated.
Fourth, beginning in 2011, AAEA membership dues will be used for the sole purpose of supporting elemental AAEA member services, consisting of the AAEA Business Office activities, member services, and AAEA meetings expenses beyond meetings and journal income.
Opportunities to express member-donor allocation preferences will be initially organized around four support categories that have represented the actual allocation of Foundation (now Trust) expenditures in recent years:
Student and Young Professional Travel and Development
The Student and Young Professional Travel and Development support category provides assistance for students and young professionals. Allocations to this category are used to provide travel grants for the Annual Meeting, general support for projects conducted by students and young professionals, and support for the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Section’s Annual Meeting activities.
Outreach
AAEA’s Outreach efforts disseminate members’ professional analysis and information to a broad public, and promote exchanges of information among members to enhance their own teaching, extension, and other outreach efforts. These goals are accomplished through such things as Choices Magazine, Policy Issues, and the Shared Outreach Materials Library.
C-FARE
The Council on Food, Agricultural, and Resource Economics (C-FARE) is a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening the national presence of the agricultural and applied economics profession. C-FARE organizes briefings, seminars and professional reviews and disseminates policy briefs. C-FARE projects are aimed at communicating the profession’s findings and demonstrating the value of agricultural and related applied economic research to policymakers and their staffs, as well as representing the public good interests of the profession.
Unrestricted Uses
Allocations of donations to the Unrestricted Uses support category will be used to support programs and projects beyond the scope of the other three support categories. These allocations may also be used to supplement activities in the other three categories as needed.
In addition to those four changes, the Board has also created the AAEA Centennial Trust Initiative. This new initiative, adopted as part of the 2010 Centennial Celebration of the AAEA, is a special opportunity whereby member donations to the Trust in 2010 will receive a dollar-for-dollar matching support commitment. Specifically, for every $1 a member allocates to each support category, the AAEA will commit an additional Trust expenditure of $1 to the budget of that support category over the next 5 years. This means that, for every dollar you donate, two dollars will ultimately be spent on the support category of your choosing. This match not only leverages the impact of your directed giving, but effectively receives a 100% return in the context of support of your chosen support category over the defined time horizon. The ability for member-donors to designate support categories will henceforth also be in effect on any member donations to appreciation clubs.
As a point of reference, the most recent annual support levels among these support categories totaled $100,000, with 28% allocated to Student & Young Professional Travel and Development; 27% for Outreach; 35% for C-FARE; and 10% for other uses.
Members will also have the ability to develop new support categories for the AAEA Trust, although the dollar for dollar matching is only guaranteed for the Centennial Trust Initiative year. In this way expenditures from the AAEA Trust can continually adapt over time to the effective demand of members for that support.
I am pleased to report that the AAEA Executive Board and AAEA Staff are unanimous in their support of the AAEA Trust and the Centennial Trust Initiative. To date the Board and Staff have already pledged $8,350 in support of the Centennial Trust Initiative and the work of the AAEA Trust support categories. I can further report that this sample of purely voluntary donations, and the allocations of those donations across support categories, exhibited a rich diversity of interests that likely reflect the wonderfully diverse AAEA membership itself. The allocations consisted of 29% directed toward Student & Young Professional Travel and Development; 28% for Outreach; 31% for C-FARE; and 12% for other uses. I am also pleased to be able to state that the entire AAEA Outreach Committee and the full CFARE Board have each expressed unanimous support for the AAEA Trust and Centennial Initiative, and we are now in the process of gathering associated pledges to the Trust.
On behalf of the AAEA Board, I now please ask for your support of the AAEA Trust. Your contributions will directly impact financial support for the AAEA activities and programs of your choice, and in 2010, your contributions will be matched, dollar for dollar, in impact!
To make a donation, you may visit www.aaea.org/trust.
The Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Trust is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization; therefore, your donation may be tax deductible. Please consult your tax advisor. The tax identification number is 61-0705416.
If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to contact AAEA Executive Director Kristin Agard at (414) 918-3190 or at Kristin@aaea.org. Additional details and background information regarding the Trust is available on the How Does the Trust Work? page of the AAEA website.
The AAEA exists to serve its members, and that membership is characterized by a richly diverse array of interests, preferences and expectations for what the Association should provide to members, the profession, and the broader community. These new initiatives provide opportunities for addressing our members’ diverse needs and desires, and provides members with a more direct and ongoing voice in defining the portfolio of activities supported by the AAEA in its second century of existence.
Thank you, in advance, for your continued support and commitment to our venerable association and profession.
Sincerely,
Ron Mittelhammer
AAEA President
