AIA Trust Component Grant Awards: 2024 Recipients

We received many excellent program proposals for this year’s AIA Trust Component Grant Program making recipient selection rather difficult! These annual awards are made possible by Victor and CNA, providers of the AIA Trust Professional Liability, Business Owners, and Cyber Liability Insurance programs and this is the 18th year in which five components were awarded grants to support their innovative programs that will assist their members and communities and promote the practice of architecture across the country.

Through the years the standard of programs remains consistently impressive and inspiring.  It is always a challenge to select only five grant recipients each year, but after much deliberation the jury decided that the 2024 awards winners who will each receive $3,000 for their programs to be:

AIA Cleveland for their Presidential Lecture Series program, a series of five lectures addressing a variety of pressing themes in the built environment. The series will be presented by a diverse group of speakers selected by chapter President, W.D. Bickerstaff, II AIA, NOMA, whose goal is to provide examples of design excellence and innovation and to inspire local members to promote positive social change through their work addressing the needs of current and future buildings and cities.

AIA Mississippi for their full-day Designing for Southern Community symposium featuring three successful southern architects in two sessions followed by a panel moderated by Roy Decker, FAIA, which will also include three local industry-adjacent experts to provide local context regarding design, finances, and politics. Session One will focus on practice and values, while Session Two will focus on the development of a single project from start to finish.

AIA New York Chapter for their Design Sprint Series where emerging professionals from diverse AEC backgrounds will be divided into teams to tackle a city site with real-world RFP, brainstorming to develop proposals covering issues of design, urbanism, sustainability, and equity in an evening of design proposals, friendly competition, networking, and collaboration. Guest mentors from government, private development, academia, design, and engineering will give feedback and support.

AIA North Carolina for their collaborative virtual mini-series from NOMA NC, AIA NC Small Firm Exchange, and AIA North Carolina, uniting rising leaders from architecture firms across NC to address three key topics – Structuring Your Organization for Success, Marketing and Business Development, and Human Resources and Diversity and Inclusion. Each session includes background videos, followed by live panelist presentations, breakout sessions for discussion, and summaries.

AIA San Fernando Valley for their series of workshops, seminars, and online resources covering topics such as legal obligations and compliance frameworks, risk assessment and mitigation strategies, financial management, best practices, and zero net energy and accessible design of affordable housing. Program will also emphasize benefits of establishing relationships with community and local government stakeholders.

Congratulations to all the grant recipients!

We encourage you to apply for future AIA Trust Component Grants. Information for 2025 grant applications will be available on www.TheAIATrust.com in January. This time next year your name could be amongst the award recipients!