Pete Bunce believes that business and general aviation have “given back for years.” The GAMA president claims that “Every year at our annual review we talk about using our aircraft for humanitarian missions . . . and when you [consider] business aviation, there are many organizations, each with a niche for routine humanitarian efforts, that the larger public isn’t familiar with, but which help a lot of people.”

We asked principals in the aviation advocacy associations featured in this report for advice on how to launch and maintain participation in a new group venture. Here’s what a selection of them said:

Jim Bennett, Starbucks aviation manager in Seattle and president of the Pacific Northwest Business Aviation Association, offers some organizational guidelines: Define your target constituency. In the case of the PNBAA, we focused primarily on corporate flight operations and those who support the business: service providers, insurers, law firms, FBOs, FAR Part 135 operators, charter/management companies, repair stations and OEMs. Our members are from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.