By W. Laird Hamberlin, SCI, SCIF CEO
As much as SCI continues to celebrate our most recent Convention as the best ever, now it is time to look forward to the coming year, as well as the next 50 years.
With that in mind, I am expanding the number of “Pillars” upon which I will stress that the future of SCI and hunting rest. If you recall, I had been focused on four pillars: Advocacy, Event Services (Convention), Membership and Conservation.
In the future, I will add two more pillars: Chapters and Hunting. This is appropriate, I feel, because both Chapters and Hunting are critical to the organization’s future. Adding the Chapter pillar is pretty self-explanatory. SCI’s successes through the years have been possible because of the organization’s amazing Chapter network, which provides the money and manpower needed for SCI to accomplish its mission of protecting the freedom to hunt and promoting wildlife conservation worldwide. As much as the Chapter network has been crucial in the evolution of SCI from a concept in the mind of Founder C.J. McElroy to the global powerhouse it is today, the Chapter network will become even more critical as SCI expands beyond anything the founders could have imagined.
SCI is in an expansionary, growth mode now, and to maximize our potential, it will take the all-out efforts of everyone involved — especially the Chapters.
With this in mind, I invite all Chapters to continue their great work, and to do all they can to increase their impacts locally as the international organization expands its impacts globally. Together we all win.
Since SCI is the greatest organization of hunters the world has ever known, it might sound a bit odd to list hunting as one of the club’s pillars. But with a little thought, it becomes obvious that without that pillar, none of the others would or could exist.
Hunting is what binds all of us together and to SCI. That’s why we exist as an organization and that is what we are protecting around the world every day of the week, every week of the year and every year from here to eternity.
The best way for members to gather and celebrate hunting each year is to attend the annual SCI Convention. Plan now to attend the upcoming Convention on February 22-25, 2023 at the Music City Center in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
