Endowment Foundation

While the $1,250,000 goal does limit money available for grants, several noteworthy efforts in alignment with the Endowment’s purpose have been supported. They include providing travel stipends for state representatives to attend a national Biosecurity Symposium shortly after 9/11 and financial support of reinvention of the AFDO website to further support members opportunities including online training programs. It will continue to be the practice of the Foundation Board to solicit the advice of AFDO, its Board and Affiliate organizations on the best use of its income.

A Board of Trustees manages the Foundation and all of the trustees are in the private sector. Because of the necessity of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety, government officials do not serve as Trustees. A list of contributors and the amount contributed is published annually.

After many decades of slow growth of federal and state governments, the trend appears to have reversed. For a variety of reasons, state budgets allocated to food and drug work have been significantly tightened. This “belt tightening” appears to be consistent with the generally accepted business view that government can be too invasive, duplicative and inefficient.

However, a corollary to this thinking is that the private sector must pay particular attention to those regulatory activities, critical to business essential to public confidence and vital in assuring product safety. AFDO’s uniformity mission and education programs are precisely in that important arena. If AFDO is to continue to play its historic and significant role in promoting uniformity among state laws, regulations and interpretations, and if AFDO is going to continue to assure that state and local officials are appropriately knowledgeable about their duties, then the AFDO membership must pick up the slack caused by decreasing state (and in some cases federal) budgets. This includes the Associate members, as well as all other membership categories.