Dear Friend of SMART Recovery, It’s been a busy year at SMART Recovery USA. Public 4-Point meetings have grown by 10% and Family & Friends meetings have increased by 16%. We’ve welcomed 26 new partners into our Multiple Pathways Partner program, bringing the total number to 34. We kicked off a major project in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC using opioid settlement funds. And we hired an experienced Director of Training to guide us in updating our training programs to be fully inclusive and aligned with best practices in adult learning. In April, we hosted a very successful first national conference since the pandemic. 145 diverse individuals gathered in Salt Lake City to celebrate SMART’s 30th anniversary with an eye on how we could make SMART’s empowering approach effective for all. Building on the energy from that event, we embarked on a methodical process of updating our flagship handbooks to reflect current science. Our dedicated Programs Oversight Committee has met throughout the year to get the handbooks just right, and we look forward to rolling them out early in 2025. 2025 promises to be a year of incredible growth for SRUSA. In addition to launching our new handbooks and training, we will gather in Charlotte in April for our next national conference. With the theme of Building Communities of Empowerment, we plan to focus on how SMART and its champions can effectively engage in local recovery communities as the voice for empowerment and self-determination for all. In a divided world, SMART’s approach will shine as a model that respects individual autonomy in the context of a supportive community. Our volunteers are the engine behind that supportive community, and we can’t thank them enough. We’re witnessing “SMART communities of empowerment” develop organically across the country, and we look forward to bringing you stories about some of these successes over the weeks to come. Supporting SMART’s growth into more and more communities nationally requires financial resources. Our outreach team has developed new materials and a community of practice for those who wish to engage in outreach. We want to provide those materials to volunteers for free. We also want to pay for attendance at local events, state conferences, and the like as we further develop our volunteer outreach resources. Will you please help us maximize our outreach impact by supporting our annual appeal at any level today? Our goal is to raise $60,000 during this year-end campaign to support our outreach efforts in 2025. Perhaps you’d like to fund a SMART Recovery table covering for outreach events by donating $150. Or send 250 brochures to a volunteer for $45. Or a poster for $30. Or all three for $225! We appreciate your gift at any level today to help support the availability of SMART empowerment for all in the future. | 
