Non-profits such as the Seaplane Pilots Association achieve the bulk of their mission objectives in many ways, but ultimately the single most important ingredient is "Passion Put Into Action."
In other words, we need people to volunteer their time, donate funds and resources to help us keep waterways opens, raise public awareness, fund educational videos, continue to expand our youth programs, and in engage socially responsible activities such as seaplane pilot beach cleanups, holiday toy drives etc...
We would love to have you join our team. Examples of volunteers that are needed:
Lake Liaisons that represent SPA's eyes and ears in local communities on a specific waterway. Lake Liaisons normally live on and more likely than not operate a seaplane on the waterway that they are the SPA Liaison for. Duties of the Lake Liaisons include helping SPA's staff keep the Water Landing Directory information for their lake up to date, working with local the community and officials to maintain a positive relationship and successful access to a body of water and to assist in resolving issues on the waterways when there are challenges involving seaplanes or seaplane access on them.
Field Directors that work in teams to represent SPA at both a local and state level in an expanded role similar to that of the Lake Liaison on a state wide or region of a state's geographic area. Field Director teams will also man aviation events & trade shows, attend meetings that affect seaplane access and conduct outreach activities to help create and maintain positive relationships between seaplanes and the communities and governing agencies within their state. Field Directors are needed with specific skill sets and/or specialty areas including public outreach, government relationships, waterways and fund raising just to name a few.
Event Volunteers help SPA work trade shows, aviation events and safety seminars.
Other Volunteers may offer areas of specific talent and/or assistance such as regional legal representation, strong political advocacy experience, fund raising, technology, waterway knowledge, invasive species knowledge, film making and endless other talents that we need as an association.
Given the the challenges that the Seaplane Pilots Association faces as we aggressively represent the water flying community on a variety of fronts across vast geographic distances membership revenue only represents a small percentage of the annual budget income needed to achieve our advocacy goals. This is not unusual, and is reflected in other organizations such as AOPA which operates at a much larger scale than SPA. With this in mind donors are essential to SPA's success in achieving its mission goals. Most donors choose to give monetary donations, but donations of services such as legal representation are also common and extremely helpful, aircraft and other items that SPA can sell or raffle also provide innovative donations that can all prove to benefit our annual ability to engage and protect the seaplane community,