To the Long Blue Line:

Your Association of Graduates is transforming.

We aspire to create an association of ALL Air Force Academy graduates — an association that has influence and impact, supports USAFA’s enduring mission of developing leaders of character and provides a lifetime of service to the Long Blue Line.

The time for this transformation is now. In January, our association, by way of a unanimous vote of our AOG board of directors, expanded membership at no cost to all graduates. Since that time, nearly 4,000 graduates have joined (if you are not a member and want to join or learn more, click here). In the meantime, we are seeing record numbers of cadets indicate their intent to join the AOG upon graduation from the Academy.

These developments all point toward an exciting future for our association. They also make it clear that the AOG must be the relevant, value-add alumni association that we graduates want and, yes, demand as members of the Long Blue Line. Anything less won’t get it done.

To get this transformation right, we knew soliciting your opinions and viewpoints through a robust feedback and survey process would be vital. That’s why earlier this year, following focus groups, we asked you to participate in our first comprehensive survey of graduates since 2006. Between Feb. 24 - March 28, we offered the survey to all graduates (not just members), and 8,616 of us participated — a 17% response rate — and 7,268 of us completed the full 15-minute questionnaire (14% of all living graduates). Our survey consultant assures us the response rate was high enough for the data to be statistically significant.

Thanks to those of us who took the survey, the association got high-quality, actionable insights and data we are now using as we chart our new strategic plan. I encourage you to review the executive summary and survey results deck, both of which are available on this site. This is the information we have used in starting to develop our strategic plan, and we want to make it available to you.

What’s next?

We Air Force Academy grads tend to be a bunch that demands results. So you ask, “What’s next?” Thanks to your feedback, we have entered the strategic planning phase, using your thoughts to guide our efforts. In July, our board of directors reviewed and provided feedback on our draft joint strategic plan for the Association of Graduates and the Air Force Academy Foundation. We will continue to refine the plan, and then the boards will again see it in the fall for final feedback.

Following the board feedback phase, we will share the plan with the Class Advisory Senate, graduate affinity groups, chapters and others. Then, we’ll take the strategic plan to the full graduate community in December. This will continue to be a transparent process.

You can expect to see the transformation really get underway in 2023. That said, we know from the survey results that graduates want their association to create opportunities for deeper connection, networking and mentorship — you said this loud and clear. We are working on some options for addressing those desires in meaningful ways that are easy to access.

I respectfully ask for your patience as we work methodically through this process. We want to get this right because the Long Blue Line deserves no less.

Please review the executive summary and the survey results deck, be on the lookout for updates and please send your constructive feedback to AOG@usafa.org.

Mike Gould ’76