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America's WaterTrails | Al Staats | Al Staats & Associates | Resources for Change | Professional Events Chronology

America's WaterTrails

Al Staats launched America's Watertrails, a forward-thinking communications and support project to promote and publicize the development of water trails throughout the Americas. This is his latest initiative in a 30-year career advocating for the protection and restoration of America's waterways and lands.

Our mission is to encourage a continental network of water trails.

To accomplish this, America’s Water Trails strives to:

• encourage a broad public understanding and appreciation for water trails, and the benefits they provide;
• facilitate dialogue and networking among individuals, organizations and agencies involved in developing and managing water trails; and
• provide technical assistance, direct or referrals, in partnership with non-profit organizations, government agencies and businesses

With expansion of the modern water trails movement in the 1990s, Al joined in 1999 with a select group of professionals from the U.S. and Canada to work specifically on promoting the water trails concept and benefit across the continent through the non-profit organization, North American Water Trails.

In 2003, upon completion of his two-year term as the organization's first full-time Executive Director, Al launched America's WaterTrails to redirect his energies to waterways nearer to home. While passionately committed to nurturing the continental water trails movement, America's WaterTrails is grounded in water trail building and management initiatives in the Mid-Atlantic region from its base in Washington, DC.

Al Staats

A graduate of Stony Brook University, since 1979 Al has run his own management and organization capacity building consulting firm specializing in assisting public-interest, nonprofit organizations and causes. His clients have included many river and conservation organizations, foremost being American Rivers, where he managed their fundraising development efforts for four years, and served on their board of directors for twelve, from 1980 to 1992. Other organizations he has been similarly involved with include the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, American Whitewater, River Network, River Conservation Fund, American Canoe Association, American Hiking Society and the Cacapon Institute.

In 1999, Al was chosen as a founding Board member of North American Water Trails, served as Board President in 2001, and then as the organization's first full-time Executive Director. He resigned in 2003 to found America 's WaterTrails continuing his advocacy for water trails near and far.

Al has been an avid paddler for more than forty years; he was a weekend whitewater river guide for five years, and particularly enjoys expedition paddling, his most satisfying being a 2-week solo paddling adventure in 1985 tracing a historic voyageur route on the Missinaibi River from Lake Superior to James Bay in Canada.

Al Staats & Associates, Inc.

Al Staats & Associates, Inc. (ASA) is a consulting firm that, when it was founded in 1979, focused on the 4 M's--marketing, membership, media and management. It was our view that many of the non-profit organizations we worked with could become more effective in fulfilling their goals by applying professional skills that were often lacking in their mission-driven advocacy. ASA has worked with scores of organizations and causes over the years in many areas of public advocacy--social justice, public education, consumer protection, human rights, community organizing, environmental conservation, and much more, offering management consulting, fundraising and development and other capacity building services and training. In 1983 to better serve certain causes, ASA assisted in the creation of Resources For Change, Inc., a non-profit sister organization.

Resources For Change, Inc.

Resources For Change, Inc. (RFC) is a non-profit communications and public relations organization based in Washington, DC that works to better inform the American public about important political, social, cultural, and environmental issues that affect our society and its standing in the world. To that end, we offer a comprehensive range of services encompassing media relations, marketing, promotion, publishing, advertising, and other communications services. RFC was formed in 1983 and was granted tax-exempt status in May 1988. RFC sponsors the America's WaterTrails project.