You Can Fly: 2019 You Can Fly Challenge opens

The You Can Fly program is getting and keeping more pilots flying with initiatives to introduce youth to aviation, improve the flight training experience, support flying clubs, and help lapsed pilots complete their flight review. Generous donors who contribute to the AOPA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, will strengthen GA by growing the pilot ranks, giving us strength in numbers as an aviation community, as well as for advocacy purposes.

This is the fourth year that the Ray Foundation has extended a challenge grant to the AOPA Foundation to provide major funding for You Can Fly. The 2019 challenge to raise $2 million in donations for a dollar-for-dollar matching grant is an increase over last year’s $1.4 million challenge. In 2018, donors rose to the challenge and contributed more than $1.8 million, and then the Ray Foundation generously increased its matching grant to $1.8 million, for a total of more than $3.6 million in funding.

The grant honors the memory of founder James C. Ray (1923–2017), a pilot and entrepreneur whose life experience taught him that personal flight training develops skills that help students succeed not just in aviation, but in many other aspects of life.

“James promoted by example the values of self-discipline, hard work, and responsibility for one’s own actions. His life’s work lives on through the You Can Fly program,” said AOPA President Mark Baker.

AOPA hopes members will join in supporting the programs that help pilots in all phases of their life. Your generous donations keep the momentum going—and all pilots benefit from that.

Email [email protected]

Web: https://foundation.aopa.org/challenge

AOPA’s You Can Fly program supports flying clubs, encourages best practices in flight training, gets lapsed pilots back in the air, brings AOPA’s resources and expertise to pilot groups across the country, and helps high school students learn more about careers in aviation. AOPA’s You Can Fly program and the AOPA Air Safety Institute are funded by charitable donations to the AOPA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization.

Web: www.aopafoundation.org/donate