Treasury Report - April 2026

Financial Vigilance

Our financial situation is incredibly strong thanks to all of you, our members and officers. My task as Finance Committee chair is to guide us in the right direction financially, and with your help, we can achieve all our goals. We must be vigilant about funding our organization and using those funds responsibly. Your committee chairs and state officers have a yearly budget and do a great job of taking care of business effectively within these budgets, and deserve a huge Thank You.

Our mission statement needs to be our #1 focus, and it is important to remember. ABATE of Wisconsin's goal is to give the motorcyclists of Wisconsin a strong, united voice with regard to their future, their way of life, their safety, and their legal rights as motorcyclists and citizens.

We have had an influx of anonymous donations recently,, and I want to say Thank You to everyone who sends extra money in with their membership or chooses to donate directly to us. A generous member has been footing the bill for our legislative consultants Hartley Blunt Strategies, allowing your Legislative team to focus on our agenda and develop strategies to combat draconian measures against motorcyclists. Last month, a Region, 4A member sent us $5,000 to use as the BOD sees fit, and the Board chose to increase the number of scholarships to Bikers in the Beltway, sending more members to lobby for us in Washington DC.

In February our ABATE of Wisconsin Board of Directors approved a fundraising effort towards the Marlene Bautch Memorial Foundation. The purpose of the Foundation is to fund a new building at ABATE Acres, and it currently has $24,550 that was donated specifically to the fund. Our 2026 fundraising effort for the foundation will be capped at $135,000. We will continue to fundraise in 2027 to come up with the remainder of what is needed to complete the project. This building will be used to store and display ABATE memorabilia in a museum-type setting and to include a boardroom for meetings.

While we want to achieve the $135,000 goal, we still need to fund ABATE of Wisconsin as we always have through membership, fundraising, and donations to achieve our mission. I am asking regions to please remember this as you plan fundraisers for the year. When you decide as a region where to designate your proceeds, remember that you have only one event per year where you can specifically designate where that money is used, either inside or outside our organization. At Officer Training, our officers learned how much it takes to fund our organization, and your major fundraisers still need to feed the general fund so we can take care of business as usual.

Lastly, there are businesses throughout the state that donate regularly to us to help fund our cause. Whether these donations are in the form of sponsorships, advertising or straight-up donations, they are an integral part of us and deserve a huge Thank You as well.

Paul Vita

Finance Committee Chair