Last month, we conducted in Atlantic City, N.J., the first quarterly Regional Council and Chapter Leadership Workshop. Sixty-five chapter leaders, from Maine to Virginia, attended. This one-and-a-half-day training event is the new training model that replaced the annual leadership symposium. By all accounts, this was a successful and productive training session. Each attendee left the workshop with a workbook that included chapter management and legislative best practice checklists. To find out future locations for these leadership workshops, click here.

Speaking of best practices, kudos to the El Paso (Texas) Chapter, which recently established the El Paso Chapter Outreach Foundation. The foundation is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and all donations to the foundation are 100-percent tax deductible. For those of you interested in learning more about registering your chapter as a 501(c)(3), contact chapters@moaa.org. Many of you have expressed interest in doing so.

— Col. Terri Coles, USA (Ret)