If you’ve ever been to a Trash Can Turkey Roast, you know what’s inside this trash can, sitting upside down in an old-fashioned galvanized wash tub—a nice fat turkey.
ITNAmerica will open our 19th Annual Meeting this year, as we have for several years, with a big party attended by nonprofit, community-based transportation providers, volunteer drivers, foundations, philanthropists, policy makers and researchers from all over the country. Standing around this not-so-fancy oven on the patio will be the chefs with adult beverages in their hands.
Because we purchased this roasting gear with funds from our Federal Transit Administration cooperative agreement for ITNCountry: Transportation for Rural and Small Communities, we needed to return any equipment we purchased to the FTA when the demonstration project was complete. So, I printed a sign, Property of the Federal Transit Administration, complete with logo, and pasted it to the side of our trash can and sent a photo to our wonderful FTA Program Manager, Rik Opstelten.
“We would like to return this equipment from our Trash Can Turkey Roast to the Federal Transit Administration, now that our ITNCountry demonstration project is complete,” I said. Returning equipment when a project is complete is proper compliance with federal policy. “How should I arrange this?” I asked.
Sense of humor intact, Rik replied he needed to pass this important request up the chain of command. I am unsure how far up the chain our request traveled, but we do still have our trash can and wash tub, and we are still roasting a nice fat turkey in it every year for our Annual Meeting.
The takeaway here is that we are not fancy, and we are definitely frugal. We do not charge a registration fee for our Annual Meeting because we know that the nonprofit communities we serve are just as careful with funding and resources as we are, and we want more than anything to bring people and communities together to work, think and sometimes play to meet the mobility needs of older adults and people with mobility challenges.
Please join us this year for our 19th Annual Meeting in Portland, Maine. There is no registration fee and breakfast and lunches are provided during the event, November 11, 12 and 13. Our theme this year is Volunteer Transportation and Access to Healthcare and we will also be talking about exciting developments in insurance policy for volunteer drivers.
If you are working on nonprofit, community-based volunteer transportation, or you are a transportation planner wishing to start a service, or you are a philanthropy wishing to support communities trying to start such a program, you are so welcome to join us. Learn about America’s Volunteer Driver Center and our campaign to recruit 150,000 volunteer drivers and 1,000 nonprofit providers to help provide the rides so many people need. And please come to the Turkey Roast, cooked to perfection in its Federal Transit Administration oven. You can register here.
