NOTES FROM THE PRESIDENT
The New Year is here, and we are celebrating the start of our next 100 years at the DAC. 2024 was a year of some significant changes and developments at the DAC. Hiring employees, re-establishing our permit status with the City of Minneapolis, and hosting celebrations of our first century together. Now, it is time to turn our attention forward to 2025. The new year brings new opportunities for us, and it is healthy for our organization to move forward mindfully.

At the annual meeting, we outlined how we would like to add structure to our fund development efforts. Every healthy nonprofit needs to actively plan for the future, and to have a strong future we need to solidify financial planning. To achieve these goals, we have assembled a group of board members and other volunteers to secure donations and funding for our organization and our projects. This is a relatively new endeavor for the DAC. To my knowledge, our organization has never had a dedicated fundraising team. This is not being done because we are in a weak financial position. Rather, we are looking to plan for the future, and make sure that we are strong enough to endure any economic uncertainty. We also have a number of projects within the DAC that we would like to tackle, and this fundraising will reinforce our organization as we make our future plans.

Another area of improvement that we identified last year was membership. Every organization like ours has a member attrition rate. To balance this out, we are actively working to bring in new members, and host and plan events that will engage prospective members. At the annual meeting, we described how we have a significant population of people in Minnesota and the upper Midwest, who identify as having a Danish heritage. With this in mind, we will be working to attract new members and new member activity groups. Activities and social events are what bring our members together and keep our community strong and thriving.

The DAC is on a very solid financial and organizational footing. I am confident that we will continue to thrive for our next 100 years.
Pete Gantriis