Dear Bridge Enthusiast,
Remember card games around the kitchen table with parents or grandparents?
Perhaps you started with “Go Fish” or “War” before you graduated to "Crazy Eights" and "Gin Rummy." But the ultimate sign that you’d arrived in the card-playing world was when you graduated to contract bridge, the greatest mind game ever.
Remember the feeling of your first successful finesse? Your first grand slam? The affirmations, even from your opponents, that you played a hand well? That’s what bridge is about.
Five years ago, Emir, Miguel, Hugo, and Tammy knew nothing about the game of bridge. Thanks to a series of grants the ACBL Educational Foundation made to La Liga de Bridge in Oaxaca, Mexico, they first learned how to play bridge and are now certified to teach bridge in their own neighborhoods. The flywheel is turning and gaining momentum.
The ACBL Educational Foundation aims to keep that momentum going. We’re thankful for the $2 check-off gift you made to us when you renewed or signed up to become a member of ACBL. That helped us get the flywheel started.
With your help, we are now able to mentor kids in the Boys and Girls Clubs in the Chicago area and fund
pilot programs that engage the military. We are excited to announce the first pilot program will be launched at the Fort Jackson Army Base in Columbia, SC, in February, 2020.
With your help, we are now able to expand the number of collegiate programs and competitions played by students from Princeton University to the University of Minnesota and beyond, as well as encourage all forms of bridge, in the living room, club house, or online. But we’re just getting started!
The Foundation is energized:
- We have expanded our board of trustees.
- We have hired our first full-time professional executive director (me!).
- We conducted a survey that shows that millions of Americans play bridge regularly and millions more want to learn.
- We are strengthening our partnership with ACBL (though we are an independent nonprofit).
- We are planning a substantial boost in our grantmaking and programming in 2020.
Your strategic thinking, your competitiveness, your deductive reasoning, and your memory have all been enhanced by this game.
Help us to continue giving this opportunity to more people in North America, from middle school to midlife to retirement, from all backgrounds.
Your donation in any amount to our annual fund will strengthen our grantmaking and programming.
