As the 2025 sailing season ramped up, the Alliance’s all-volunteer board of directors made the difficult decision to take a step back from actively providing some of its traditional member services such as managing a national championship, arranging for Willard Bond posters and related apparel.
Many factors have contributed to this decision.
One is that running the national championship — one of our most prominent functions — faced declining participation by local hospice regatta teams, then had several difficult years during the pandemic. The championship brought together sailors from across the country who competed for the Virginia Brown Inspiration Trophy. Our last championship, scheduled for Charleston SC was hit by a hurricane, forcing us to cancel the event.
Then, for the 2023 & 2024 seasons, we decided to focus on our other Member Services rather than run a championship. Running that national event requires many resources. We felt we could not put on a quality event attractive to enough teams from our member regattas.
Looking at the results of our 2023-24 focus on member services, we concluded that most regattas appreciated that we were a knowledge resource but were not taking advantage of services.
One example was our subscribing to an online fundraising tool for which we covered the cost, set up and provided professional services for tailoring their campaigns. Because only a few regattas took advantage of this — although successful for them — we are not continuing that.
Other examples include the Hospice Hero awards we provided to each regatta for persons they wished to honor at their events. These awards mixed reception. Our longstanding arrangements for Willard Bond posters/notecards and on-line shop for regatta apparel also had declining participation.
Compounding these results is the fact that the Alliance board of directors is now only four members, compared to a healthier year when we had we had eight to ten volunteers. A few are coping with family issues, and the none can support all that we’ve done before.
For all these reasons we are not charging dues for 2025.
We do intend to continue to support local hospice regattas to the extent we can. We are open to ideas on how we can better serve them as they continue their local efforts.
For anyone with ideas and comments, the Alliance board does meet monthly and would like to hear your thoughts. You can email us at nhra@hospiceregattas.org, which is the active Contact address on our website hospiceregattas.org.