Momentum - February 2020 - 18

SAE NEWS

SAE 101: VOLUNTEER RECOGNITION

SAE International staff nominated 47 individuals for the Contributor of the Year Award. Thirty-five of them attended the celebration event held November
14-16 at the Paris Las Vegas hotel.
(In each month's issue of MOMENTUM,
we write about a specific aspect of the
organization. This month the subject is our
volunteer-recognition program.)
LESS THAN A MONTH after being
recognized as SAE International's first
Contributor of the Year Award recipient,
Bob Ireland was at it again, doing
volunteer work on behalf of the SAE
Aerospace Council. It's just one of the
many ways he supports the organization.
He can't help himself.
He calls it his "SAE habit."
Donna Edenhart, Director of
Membership and Sections for SAE, calls
Ireland and the other volunteers who
were nominated for the award her "allstar contributors."
"In my role, I hear so many great stories
about our all-star contributors who are
volunteering their time to help move the
mobility industry forward," she said at
a November 14-16 celebration designed
specifically to reward and honor "the
few dozen volunteers who go above and
18 February 2020

beyond in terms of service to SAE."
It was the repeated mention among
the broad SAE staff of names such as
Bob Ireland, Laura Klauser, Dean Case,
and many others that gave Edenhart and
her team the idea to start a formal way in
which to demonstrate the organization's
appreciation for its large-and
indispensable-volunteer base.
"And so we developed a robust
program, beginning with the first annual
SAE Recognition Day in 2018, so we could
offer all of our 60,000-plus volunteers
a heartfelt 'thank you' for supporting
our mission and objectives,'" Edenhart
explained. Held on the last Monday
each June, Recognition Day features a
flurry of activities including social media
postings, email campaigns, and major
prize giveaways. "It's extremely important
to SAE that we let our volunteers know
how much we appreciate their valuable
contributions to our organization and to
the mobility industry at large," she added.
But for its most dedicated volunteers,
the team decided that it needed to come

up with a way to express its appreciation
in a deeper, more personal way. The result
of the ensuing brainstorming sessions
was a program in which a few dozen
especially selfless volunteers would
be nominated for a new Contributor of
the Year Award. The nominees would
be invited to an all-expenses-paid
Contributor of the Year celebration at a
resort, with the long-weekend celebration
ending in a dinner program where a single
volunteer would be revealed as SAE's
Contributor of the Year.
"While we ultimately selected one
contributor for the honor, we wanted
to also recognize a larger group as our
Top Contributor Class of 2019," Edenhart
noted.
Directing and enabling volunteers to
support SAE's mission is a crucial aspect
of many SAE staffers' jobs. "So who
better to make the nominations than the
staff who work side by side with them all
year?" asked Edenhart rhetorically.
From SAE's large volunteers base,
staff nominated 47 individuals for the
MOMENTUM

Momentum - February 2020

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