The AIA Ohio Foundation

With the winter headed towards the rear-view mirror and with spring in sight, the AIA Ohio Foundation will begin its busiest time of the year. With a focus on scholarship and AIAS chapter grants, the Foundation members will spend much of this spring visiting Ohio’s five schools of architecture and meeting with students and administration to forge a better relationship between the academy and the profession. These meetings create an important connection between the AIA and our future members.

With an effort to create better bond between the schools and the profession, the AIA Ohio Foundation is looking toward creating an improved one-on-one relationship with students and administration in the schools. While most relationships in the past have been built on emails and phone calls, the Foundation is looking to get back to our pre-Covid process of meeting with the students, through their AIAS chapter, at each of the schools. Through this more direct meeting process, it is our hope that the AIA can better understand the needs of the schools and how we might be able to adapt our programs to be more responsive to their concerns.

The Foundation’s 2024 organizational meeting will occur on February 22, 2024, with the election of new officers for the next twelve months. Along with our efforts to better define and develop the AIA Ohio Foundation Legacy Scholarship program that was approved last year, the Board will look for ways that the Foundation can work more closely with AIA Ohio. While each organization shares the same basic goals, each serves a different function. AIA Ohio concentrates more on the needs of the profession and is in some ways an inward facing organization, while the Foundation looks to the future and the broader needs of the profession and is more of an outward facing organization. The biggest difference is that AIA Ohio is a 501 (c)(6) while the AIA Ohio Foundation is a 501 (c)(3), who can accept charitable contributions.

Like AIA Ohio, the Foundation will soon begin our strategic planning process. Held shortly after AIA Ohio’s planning retreat, the Foundation looks to develop a plan that is in concert with the plan developed by AIA Ohio. When both organizations can coordinate our efforts, the work of one entity can reinforce and multiply the return of the other.
The AIA Ohio Foundation thanks the membership of AIA Ohio for your ongoing support. As always, the Foundation asks that if you have the ability to contribute to the AIA Ohio Foundation, we would love to have you help us support our mission. More information on how to contribute can be found on our webpage at The AIA Ohio Foundation | AIA Ohio.

Bruce Sekanick, FAIA, AIA Ohio Foundation President