The Future Of the Foundation

[MichaelFarley56]

Hello All,

Upon the recommendation of several members here, I've moved a previous post I made to this so that we can all begin a new discussion on the potential future direction of the Sonex Builders and Pilots Foundation.

To offer some insight on the current status of the Sonex Foundation, allow me to repeat some history which I'm sure most of you already know.

Back in early 2012 when the Foundation was created, the original creators and leadership wanted to start a type club for the good of the entire Sonex community with the hopes that we could get things underway and set the club off on a good path, and then after a given amount of time, other members of the community would be willing to step and and continue leading the club on its journey. We always envisioned the Foundation as a living entity, fueled by participation from the members, and utilized by the entire Sonex family of builders and pilots.

Here we are 6 years later, and while I believe the Foundation has been incredibly well received by the entire Sonex community, as the current President of the Foundation, I want to be honest and candid with all of you: as a whole, the Foundation has grown increasingly stagnant.

On another current thread there has been recent discussion why a Foundation-managed Sonex accident database has not been updated in quite some time. The reason why it hasn’t been updated is very simple. No one will volunteer their time to do it. Plain and simple. That’s also why the Foundation website has received only minimal updates, why there are no real current Foundation projects currently underway, and why the newsletter normally only contains articles from the same few contributors.

At this point, we need people to take over leadership roles. We need people to help with website updates, including updating this accident reports page, among others. We need people to offer newsletter articles. We need people to think of, and then actually lead, projects for the good of the community.

Just like everyone else in the Sonex community, I want to see it succeed. I, along with many others, have put a lot of time and money into this in order to get things moving. But, at this point, unless some members of this community are prepared to start stepping up and helping by taking over some important tasks and key leadership positions, the Foundation may not be far away from going to an inactive status.

I don't mean for this thread to be all bad news. On the other hand, the good news is that we as a group have Chris to thank for these forums and Jeff to thank for the podcasts. Both of those are invaluable to the Sonex community. I'm very happy and thankful that, as a community, there continues to be much useful discussion on building and flying all Sonex airplanes through these two sources. Personally, I hate to see the Foundation side of the community grow stale, so I’m happy to talk to anyone who is willing to volunteer their time and/or expertise to help with any of the aforementioned tasks.

Anyone interested? If anyone has any thoughts, considerations, ideas, etc. please feel free to post on here or PM me.

Thank you everyone and fly safe!