Security Gives Back: ASIS Foundation Proud of Global Impact

The ASIS Foundation is well-known around the world for the research it pumps out and the grants it delivers to security professionals and organizations who are looking to advance their careers and boost the security industry as a whole.

But all of that research and all of those grants don’t pay for themselves. It takes a lot of financial support and backing from friends and families of the 30,000 global members to keep the foundation growing stronger every year and supporting more and more causes and initiatives every year.

The biggest and most popular of those fundraising efforts is the ASIS Foundation fitness challenge.

“The the idea is we all get sponsors which vary in amounts, and then we go out and we we try and walk, run or bike or dance, if we wish to, as much as we can as far as we can, in order to raise as much money as we can, ,” says ASIS Foundation chairman Martin Gill.

There are individual prizes for those who do the most to get themselves in better shape, he says, and team prizes for those who recruited the most members, raised the most money and went the furthest distance.

“There’s a bit of a fun and a competitive element to it, but you’re raising money and you’re creating involvement in a security initiative,” says Gill. “People are getting fit at the same time. It’s got all the right elements to it and it’s certainly something we hope to build on in the years ahead.

“We were fortunate in that some companies sponsored it, so that helped us raise extra money. We’ve built a foundation now and we’ve just got to make a foundation in terms of a base of interest around the world and we have to build on that as we move forward,” he says.

Why the ASIS Foundation Embraces Philanthropy

The ASIS Foundation also sells pins at the annual Global Security Exchange (GSX), scheduled this year for Sept. 29-Oct. 1 in New Orleans, and other initiatives that raise money to pay for the programs it runs.

“These are also opportunities to bring people together from across the world and that’s the great thing about a foundation,” says Gill. “It’s more than just raising funds and raising awareness and creating opportunities. It’s bringing people together.”

The goals of the ASIS Foundation include generating new knowledge and encouraging education and awareness as part of its contribution to the development of the sector that it’s in, says Gill.

“There are a lot of professional people on the front line at all levels seeking to become more competent in seeking to become and more influential in the roles they fill and the roles they fill are fundamental,” he says. “Let’s make no mistake about this: the security sector is fundamental to the protection of people and it’s fundamental to the protection of the businesses and organizations that we work in.

“If security professionals don’t do their job, the consequences can be extremely serious, catastrophic,” says Gill.

The ASIS Foundation and the fitness challenge and other fundraising efforts are “a charitable process, but it’s part of that broader initiatives to provide a more informed base to security professionals so that they can perform better and make better scientifically based decisions or evidence-based decisions,” he says.

“I’m extremely proud of the work that that we do. It’s global and it represents all parts of the world,” says Gill. “It’s a really great honor for me personally to be the chairman this year, but also to be part of something, as I have been for many years now, that is really geared to developing good practice and contributing to the progress of the security sector generally.”

Gill calls the ASIS Foundation “a great thing to be a part of, although we, as trustees, really just facilitate opportunities for those who really do milk the opportunity and go on to do some fantastic bits of work.”

“One of the issues that I’ve learned is it is possible to have a very big impact through an initiative, but they have to be thought through to be really meaningful and really impactful,” he says. “It sounds easy, right? ‘We will do good. We will raise money.’

“But to do that well and to be optimal in its impact, it does need thought and it does need application and it does need management and it does need an ongoing process of keeping people engaged and keeping people interested.” says Gill. “Just because people do it for free, that doesn’t mean they don’t need something back in return.

“They need interest and they need support and they need engagement. That can be expensive or at least time-consuming and difficult to get right, so there is a process of doing it well,” he says.

The post Security Gives Back: ASIS Foundation Proud of Global Impact appeared first on Security Sales & Integration.

from Security Sales & Integration https://www.securitysales.com/news/security-gives-back-asis-foundation/613261/
via CCTV