AFA National Convention: September 12-13

The 2026 AFA National Convention was held at the Gaylord Resort in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC, on September 12-13. Bill Yucuis and Emily Farkas attended in person, and Teri Weide and Mike Lezaun attended virtually as official AFA Florida delegates. You can find the Convention Agenda plus PowerPoint Slides from presentations given at the Convention at the following link: https://www.livebinders.com/b/3720107. I wanted to provide some information for those who could not attend.

Shown below is a summary of some of the Business meeting presentations which directly apply to our Chapter.

Membership Update: AFA has a ultimate goal of attaining 1 million members. AFA started Phase I, establishing a free 1-year Mission Membership category in March of 2026. You can find details at https://www.afa.org/join/. The National AFA staff added members using data collected through a number of avenues, including registration and attendance at various AFA events. It resulted in an immediate jump in total membership from about 150,000 members to about 350,000 members. As of September 2, the AFA total membership was 370,000 members. The impact on the Waterman-Twining Chapter was our Chapter membership jumped from about 1,200 members to a current membership of over 2,200 members.

Phase II is Premium Membership, which was approved by the Board of Directors but needed to be approved by the Convention delegates. It established three membership tiers: 2-year, 3-year, and 5-year memberships, with a cost of $90, $120, and $175, respectively. Right now, there is little difference in benefits between a Mission Membership and Premium Membership, which led to lots of discussion at the Convention. The Premium Membership was approved and will go into effect in January 2027.

By the way, Life Membership will remain the same. Also, Phase III will provide enhancements to Premium Memberships, which could possibly result in fewer benefits for a Mission Membership, but definitely more benefits for Premium Membership.

One big issue with the huge increase in memberships is Chapters do not have an easy (or cheap) way to contact Chapter members. For example, I have access to about 1,700+ emails for our 2,200+ Chapter members but I can only send them out on groups of about 25, to prevent being labeled as Spam, plus the AFA official email, which we are highly encouraged to use for AFA business, limits me to 100 emails per hour and 250 emails per 24-hour period. If exceeded, I get blocked from the using the AFA-provided email. Recently, it took me over two weeks to send out all these emails. Right now, the recommended solution is for the Chapter to purchase a commercial software package, which can get expensive with this many emails. AFA is aware of this problem and is working on providing a National solution for all Chapters.

AAS/SW Update: The Arnold Air Society (AAS) National Commander and Silver Wings (SW) President gave an update. One big Chapter goal is to work more closely with the USF AAS squadron, since they are all AFA Chapter members. The AAS Joint National Project is National Disaster Support, and a Monthly Engagement Program requires the AAS squadron to earns points by accomplishing specific tasks, several which involve AFA Chapter interaction. In addition, the Chapter provides financial support to the AAS/SW Regional Conclaves (RCON) and the National Conclave (NATCON). The USF RCON will be held in Orlando on November 20-22

Emily attended two Workshop sessions of AI Made Easy and Advocacy. She will write a short summary about what she learned and how it will help our Chapter.

Workshop 1: AFA Field Advocacy – Actions That Make a Difference
The AFA Field Advocacy workshop focused on strengthening AFA’s advocacy efforts through active participation at the chapter and state levels. The presentation emphasized that effective advocacy begins with building relationships with community leaders, military leaders, and elected officials, and ensuring that AFA members understand and can communicate the Association’s legislative priorities. The advocacy cycle includes identifying Air Force, Space Force, and quality-of-life needs, developing and approving legislative positions, and then engaging local communities and elected officials to build support for those priorities.

The workshop also reviewed AFA’s FY27 advocacy priorities, including Air Force readiness and recapitalization, increased Space Force resources, military family housing, counter-UAS authorities and investment, base defense against emerging threats, and support for the Defense Civilian Training Corps. Looking ahead to FY28, potential issues include weapon-system sustainment, Guard and Reserve resources, multi-year procurement, cyber, military construction, installation remediation, and quality-of-life and benefit issues. A key takeaway for chapters was the importance of engaging local military and community leaders to identify their needs and concerns and feeding those issues back into AFA’s national advocacy process.

Workshop 2: AI Made Easy – A Chapter Leader’s Guide to Working Smarter

The AI Made Easy workshop provided practical guidance for chapter leaders on using artificial intelligence to reduce the administrative burden on volunteers and improve chapter communications. The presenters described AI as a force multiplier for volunteers, demonstrating how tools such as ChatGPT can assist with emails, newsletters, flyers, social media posts, event ideas, sponsor letters, and other routine chapter communications.

A particularly useful portion of the workshop addressed how to write effective AI prompts using the formula Role + Task + Context + Format + Tone. The presenters also demonstrated a practical process for using AI to develop AFA in Action articles from information collected following chapter events. The session stressed responsible AI use, including never uploading classified, personally identifiable, or sensitive operational information and always verifying facts, reviewing tone, protecting privacy, and applying human judgment before publishing AI-generated material.

Overall takeaway: Both workshops provided practical tools that chapters can immediately put into use—one focused on increasing the effectiveness of AFA’s grassroots advocacy and the other on helping volunteer leaders use AI to work more efficiently and strengthen chapter communications.