Foundation Makes Progress in Mission to Professionalize the Catering Industry
Through Scholarships, Research and Education

The Foundation of NACE is a dramatically enhanced organization, facilitating change in our industry and ensuring its long-term success. As always, we look to your support to maintain the exciting momentum.

In the last year, the Foundation of NACE has made incredible leaps toward delivering on its promise and mission: Professionalizing the catering and events industry through education, scholarship, and research.

At our conference in Philadelphia this summer, we delivered on a promise to guarantee a bright future for our industry by creating the Vince DeFinis Scholarship. We awarded $15,000 to University of Houston student Jennifer Durham who attended our conference and personifies the leadership qualities we strive to develop within NACE. We will award another scholarship this year to an equally worthy recipient.

In addition, the Foundation of NACE has ambitious plans to bring a dynamic speaker to our conference in Charlotte who is as high quality and integral to the success of the event as celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss was to the Philadelphia Experience!

And, we are ready to tackle an ambitious project -- funding a comprehensive industry study that examines compensation levels, sales activity and growth potential for the catering and events industry. This will position NACE as an industry thought leader and resource of relevant industry data.

While we are proud of all these efforts, they require considerable, continued commitment on the part of those who support the Foundation of NACE.

We know how hard it is to give funds at any time, but particularly today. While the recent economic challenges facing our nation and the world make it extremely challenging to consider philanthropic interests and endeavors, support has never been more critical to the Foundation of NACE and to the long-term success of our industry.

We hope that you are as proud as we are of the activities of the Foundation of NACE in the recent year, and believe as we do that an investment today of any size will dramatically pay off in the form of a professional, thriving industry long into the future.

With Best Professional Regards,

Eric Ostrow
Chairman, Board of Trustees
Foundation of NACE