by Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien with the ANN Cast of Thousands
"Christmas? A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket once a
year." - E. Scrooge.
We're coming to the end
of the year, and you all know what that means… along with
chasing the popular toys through mobbed malls, enduring puerile,
saccharine Christmas Muzak, and bearing up under a ceaseless
barrage of Year in Review prose, you have to face the close of the
tax year. Ouch.
One way to swing a double-edged sword of reducing your pre-tax
income and promoting a worthwhile cause is to donate to a
tax-deductible (in the USA) charity, such as the AOPA Air Safety
Foundation.
The Air Safety Foundation does an awful lot of good, and the
vast majority of its output is available free. I have a "safety
binder" of ASF materials, and you can too (at the cost of a few
hours on the website [http://www.asf.org] and a bunch of printer
paper). I've enjoyed and benefited from ASF seminars as well, and
you can too (you can even get the materials for putting on the
seminar yourself, for the cost of shipping and handling
only). It's our donations that make all this possible.
How many of us have cajoled a non-flying spouse, significant
other, POSSLQ (yes, that's a real Census acronym), or squeeze into
attending a "Pinch-Hitter" course? Guess what - that's designed by
ASF, and ASF depends on our donations to put it on.
Whether you give a dime to ASF or not, you have benefited from
the research that it does, research that has helped knock the GA
safety rate down to the very low 6.3 mishaps per 100,000 flying
hours. The ASF works hand-in-glove with the FAA so that their
efforts, rather than wastefully duplicating one another, complement
and extend each other. Our donations make it happen.
Another thought: most of us have lost flying buddies, whether to
disease, aviation mishaps, or really dangerous activities like
driving. What better way to perpetuate a friend's name than to make
a donation in his or her memory, to an organization that will spend
that money on safety education and research? Perhaps the gift you
give will make all the difference so that someone ten years from
know is enjoying, rather than missing, his or her flying buddy, Our
donations can make it so.
There's lots of
government research and university research (most of which is
funded by tax dollars for the public good) that you'll never hear
about, and can't even learn about or read unless you're lucky
enough to have access to a great aviation library like
Embry-Riddle's Hunt Library or the library at UND. ASF research
never sits forgotten on a shelf. It's put to immediate use,
educating pilots and saving lives (not to mention machines, and
money).
I know it's been a rough year - no one knows that better than I
- and not everyone can make a donation, or use a tax deduction. If
that describes you I'm sorry, and I wish you better fortune in
2004. Please do go to the ASF website and study some of the
well-done safety stuff there - this is one place where it truly
makes sense for the better-off to help the less-well-off (because
safety benefits us all). But if you can give, and especially if
you're itemizing deductions, please consider a donation to ASF.
"Please give us the money," ASF Executive Director Bruce
Landsberg asked me to ask you directly. "You know we can make
better use of it than the Federal government."
So, please, in the interests of safety, give Bruce the money.
90% of ASF's $5 million annual budget comes from donations, and
almost all of that is individual donations from individual pilots
like us. The money comes right back into our community and works to
keep us safe.