Grants Chair – Annual Meeting Remarks 6/2/21

 The best way to describe the past year is “PAA Grants:  Covid Edition.”  At the height of the pandemic, the well-oiled machine that is the PAA grant-making process needed to adapt to the health and safety rules set by LA County and the City of Pasadena:  most importantly, this meant no in-person meetings.  Zoom was used both for committee meetings and site visits.  We were pleasantly surprised that our committee meetings ran so smoothly and the virtual site visits were deemed a success by the participants.   I would like to acknowledge and thank our Grants Committee of 18 brilliant, hard-working members for their flexibility and dedication to the process.  Thank you to: Carolyn Siegal, my assistant chair, you are QUEEN of Excel and Power Point!   You will be an excellent new Grants Chair!  Kate Clavijo, thank you for all of your work on Survey Monkey – in this challenging year, we had a lot details to keep track of.  Patty Zuber made sure that our grant applicants provided complete financial information – a painstaking task (not unlike herding cats).  Bea Trujillo, our Treasurer, for cutting 26 checks, the last of which was delivered in person yesterday.  Sara Pelton for updating the PAA website – a thing of beauty, and Shari Boyer, PR Chair – your Instagram posts were “liked” by many.  Kudos to Annaly Bennett and her Benefit Committee who organized PAA’s first ever online art auction – the success of which made it possible for us to award $315,000 in grants to 26 deserving organizations.  Finally, Judy Penner, as ever, for your fearless leadership.  Thanks to you all.