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Hi there -

A few foundation notes from the last week.

1. Patty and I met with folks from FIT Gym last week. They’d like to take the lead on organizing a 5k run for the foundation at Rockford Park in early June. This would be a family focused event, with a kids fun run, a family walk and the 5k. To make it even more festive, we could set up one of those bouncy castles (or two!) and have food trucks, face painting, etc. I think of this as the other side of the coin from the golf outing: one is expensive, smaller, geared towards adults, while this one is cheaper, massive and geared towards families. There’s plenty of opportunities to partner with local orgs and companies for sponsorship. The folks at Trail Creek Outfitters also approached Fred Sears about having one the races in their spring/summer trail series named after Beau. Great idea - but we would lose the family aspect of it, I suspect, as families with strollers would have a hard time participating. I’m open to doing both, but we would need to think through how to keep them distinct.

While we’re narrowing in on a date for the 5k at Rockford Park (seems likely that June 2 is the only early summer morning the park can accommodate us), do folks have any strong objections to the location or the idea of a family focused run?

2. Mort Kimmel emailed me and said the Philly chapter of the Anti-Defimation League (which includes DE) would like to name their annual regional award the “Beau Biden Shield Award.” By way of background, which I had no idea of, the ADL is the largest Non-Governmental Organization trainer of law enforcement in the U.S. The purpose of the award is to recognize law enforcement professionals for successful investigations and prosecution of cases involving ADL issues, i. e., hate crimes, hate groups, extremism and terrorism.

Obviously, I defer to the board here, and we need to talk through this more fully as a group, but if the foundation is focused on protecting kids, awards in his name should be focused on child protection. Exceptions can be made of course (things relating to veterans, for example), and I guess a case could be made that the ADL award falls in to child protection work, but it’s a bit of a stretch in my mind.

What do you folks think?

3. Speaking of awards, Suzanna Taipula reached out to both me, Hallie and Patty in the last few weeks. She is the director of the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute; the are the umbrella organization for the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma (www.ivatcenters.org)​. The institute is part of Alliant International University, a for-profit college based in San Diego (with four international campuses). They would like to begin an award to be given to a prosecutor/child protection attorney each year (alternating between a US and an international lawyer) in Beau’s name. The board of the foundation would review the names and help choose the winner.

While this clearly lines up with the mission of the foundation, I wonder about the organization. I’m a bit leery of for profit schools. As was Beau. Some do great work, others not so much. I’d like to ask Mel to vet these folks.

The institute also puts on a conference each year, and this year, a team from the DE is presenting on child torture. Patty is a keynote speaker. Suzanna asked if the foundation would sponsor the group coming from DE and pay for their registration fees (they’re covering travel themselves). She estimated it would be about $2,000.

I don’t think we need to wait to get the vetting report back from Mel before deciding about underwriting the registration for the DE folks. What do you guys think?

Josh Alcorn
302-598-1885
jmalcorn@me.com