Happy New Year to everyone! I hope everyone had a good holiday season. Well, we are into a new year and ATVBC is planning a great year and hoping to provide even more to all of our member clubs.

With Janice Baker leaving us, we have promoted Carrie Martin to Administration Manager and she has stepped up to the role assuming many of the responsibilities that Janice had. We are expecting even better things from Carrie as she becomes more comfortable with her new role. Kristin, our Executive Director, is assisting her where necessary, so all is going well.

• ATVBC received 7 grant requests for the first intake of the ATVBC grants. This is the grant intake that is funded by the raffle that ATVBC conducts every year. While all the submissions were good, ATVBC was unable to fund any of the grant requests due to the poor performance of the raffle in 2022. The clubs that applied have been notified and their applications have been moved to the second intake which is funded from other sources including COHV.  ATVBC should be able to fund some, if not all, of these current requests from these alternate sources. The deadline for submission on this second intake is March 15, 2023 so if you have not yet submitted a grant request, there is still time.

• As of January 11, 2023, the intake for the RSTBC ORV Trail Fund was opened up and they are now accepting requests for funding from this source. Really good news is that the amount of funds available in 2023 is larger than in previous years so, in theory, more grants should be approved.  Stay tuned for more information on this. The application for this can be obtained from the RSTBC website.  https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/sports-culture/recreation/camping-hiking/sites-trails/orv-trail-fund

• As I mentioned in my November report, ATVBC will be commencing work on its Strategic Plan in 2023, for now and the future, and while we do have a preliminary SWOT analysis, we really want to hear from all the clubs on what they think makes ATVBC tick, and where we need to improve to better serve all clubs. I do know that the information that was provided in the 2022 survey has been very helpful and we will be reaching out for further input from all the clubs.

• Membership is also a key priority for ATVBC this year. With so many people owning and riding ORV machines these days, we really want to reach out to more of these riders to show them the benefits of belonging to both ATVBC and to a club.  So if you know of people who could benefit from joining us, please reach out and encourage them to get involved.

Planning for the 2023 Poker Ride is happening and we expect to be able to announce both a location and date in our next newsletter.

Wishing all of you the best for 2023. We look forward to seeing many of you at our events and perhaps even on the trails.

Respectfully submitted,

Chris DSilva