President ’ s Address
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I am writing this address on “ Black Friday ” while my family sleeps in . Instead of shopping we will all be going to the dentist – what can I say ? The executive board and I are finally relaxing and catching up a little after a very busy fall with an election and what we decided was a successful conference . For me this is the also the official beginning of my last year as president . On September 1st Jim Hill will take over as president and my 9 years with ILOTA leadership will come to an end – maybe ... Who knows what is next . As I start to reminisce about the years , I can ’ t help but be especially proud of the work our board accomplished in the last year . The annual report is on the website at this link ( http :// ilota . memberclicks . net / message2 / link / 326ba0e8-ce6f-4ac5-a4e8- 18a721ff15c6 / 1 ). There are lots of details there for you to read . I just want to highlight a few goals that we met and a couple things we didn ’ t plan but are excited about . And I want to acknowledge some of the folks that actually made things happen .
We started to collect stories from practitioners about their Best OT Moments . It was a start toward a goal of recording at least 100 stories by the end of next year , the ILOTA Centennial year . We all have great stories – please consider sharing yours - either as a written story , or record it and send the file . We will share them with our members over the year as we celebrate 100 years of OT in Illinois .
When I started as Director of Finance way back in 2009 it was suggested to me that we start an endowed scholarship with AOTF . ILOTA had not escaped the impact of the 2008 financial collapse and I remember thinking ( with some panic ) that raising the startup funds seemed pretty “ pie in the sky ” given we had so little money in the bank and relatively few members . We didn ’ t give up the idea though – once ILOTA was on better footing and we started to raise membership we went back to the idea and began to plan what would be my first ever “ capital campaign .” Janet Adcox who took over as Director of Finance has relentlessly pursued this goal , despite some uncertainty , and I will tell you she nailed it in one year . We started by going back over the years and calculating the donations people made to ILOTA using the scholarship option on the membership form . Although that had been there for years , and people had donated for years , there had not been much effort to track those funds . After much time and work Janet established that there had been nearly 6200 dollars donated to the fund . That combined that
Lisa Mahaffey , PhD ( c ), OTR / L , FAOTA
with a generous donation by Melanie Ellexson and we were on our way . Sometime last winter Janet and I researched how to run a capital campaign , and then sat in a restaurant in Minooka and mapped out a plan to raise the remaining 25,000 we would need to start the scholarship – intimidating for sure . We calmed each other down at one point by saying we would simply do the best we could and if it took a few years so be it …. Well thanks to multiple fundraisers , amazing member donors ( thank you if you were one of them !!) and a lot of hard work by Janet and Jenny Dang we have raised all 35,000 dollars and will be investing this year . Our first scholarships will be available in 2019 through the AOTF scholarship endowment program . We will award one scholarship for an OT and one for an OTA , and they will start small , but we don ’ t plan to stop raising funds for this . As the basic endowment grows , so do the scholarships . Stay tuned .
As is always the case , we tried some new things at our conference . The conference team , made up of Christy Rojas , Jim Taylor and Jenny Dang , met nearly every month initially and then more often as conference drew near . They decided to move things around a little this year . We have had a pretty consistent schedule for years but it occurred to them if we moved things around we might be able to bring people together to network a little more than usual . Despite being a profession that teaches and believes in balance we tend to work a little too hard at conferences and forget how valuable and important it is to dedicate time to catching up with our colleagues and friends . I think moving the keynote to Friday afternoon and combining it with recognizing wonderful colleagues and members during the awards ceremony and networking reception was perfect . Sue Quinn pulled together a really nice recognition ceremony and how wonderful to celebrate two exceptional students along with three people who contributed a lifetime of work to occupational therapy as a profession and ILOTA . Later in the issue you will read about these five awardees along with our awesome OT of the year .
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