from our chairman

Association of Continuity Professionals

2025 Annual Report

Dear ACP Members:

It is my distinct pleasure to share with you the major activities, accomplishments and strategic initiatives your Association achieved in 2025.

The focus of our strategic goals & objectives was to provide our members with enhanced professional development opportunities, improve our financial health, grow new Chapters, and improve our membership retention rate while increasing total membership. Your ACP Leadership Team put their collective energy into increasing membership value and engagement while ACP remains a viable, relevant and healthy Association.

As the oldest Association serving business reliance professionals, we can still say we are an Association that is founded on: (1) Networking opportunities, (2) Growth through professional development, and (3) Service to our communities.

This report will provide you with the highlights of how we achieved our 2025 strategic goals and objectives.

As a reminder, I’d like to share our Vision and Mission Statements:

ACP Vision

To become the premier global membership community for risk and resilience professionals.

ACP Mission

The Association of Continuity Professionals is a diverse community of risk and resilience professionals providing networking, professional development, and a pathway for those new to the profession.

Committees

While your National Board of Directors has the responsibility of defining the strategic goals and objectives required to accomplish our Vision and Mission, we owe a great deal of gratitude to each of our hard-working Committees. The National Board of Directors continues to be a “working Board” of volunteers where committees consisting of National, Chapter Leaders and ACP Staff drive our key strategic initiatives. If you have an interest in serving on a committee, please contact Mike Gifford.

ACP’s Strategic Plan consists of Key Results Areas (KRAs) which represent each Committee’s annual goals and objectives.

The following Committees were chartered for 2025:

Chapter Development Committee

Led by Gail Moraton and Chapter “Champions”, we successfully launched the Oklahoma Chapter (Bev Wood, President) while supporting the launch of the North Carolina Chapter (Lisa Maurer, President). We are currently supporting the relaunch of the Northern New Jersey Chapter (formally Garden State) in early 2026 (Dr. Bernard Jones, President).

In 2026, Gail we be focused on 4 potential Chapters:  Pacific Northwest, Toronto, Canada, Northern Illinois, and South Florida.

Chapter Champions receive assistance through a toolkit and support from the Chapter Development and Chapter Relations Committees. If you are interested in being involved in the launch of a new Chapter, please reach out to Gail Moraton at gmoraton@outlook.com.

Chapter Relations Committee

Led by Lori Adamo and Michelle Neison, the Chapter Relations Committee (CRC) provided support and resources to all Chapter Leaders via the monthly Chapter Relations Round Table which is a forum for Chapter Leaders to share their experiences, learn, ask questions, and grow.  Using a set of Chapter tools and resources, the CRC aids Chapters that are considered in distress.  Some recent success stories are the Alamo and Mid-Tennessee Chapters.

Membership Committee

We ended 2025 with 860 members and 24 Chapters. My thanks go to our Chapter Leaders for retaining and growing their respective Chapters.  It’s your persistence and tenacity that helps us reach our membership goals!

Our membership recruiting strategy included targeted prospecting emails and the Office of Public Affairs created “themes” of interest in News & Views every month.

To demonstrate our commitment to growth Dawn Turton (Membership Committee Chair) will be leading the effort to establish new metrics to report membership by Chapter and trends. Plus, we plan to place particular emphasis on conducting membership campaigns. There will also be efforts made to ensure Chapter Presidents and Treasurers receive their reports on a timely basis.

Office of Public Affairs

In 2024, we established the Office of Public Affairs (OPA), led by Cathy Robbins.  OPA is responsible for all social media (Marketing, Communications, and Digital Content). With a focus on communication and timely information sharing, OPA did an outstanding job creating relevant content and publishing it in weekly News & Views, LinkedIn, the ACP website, and our other social media channels.

Professional Development Committee

One of our strategic goals is to provide enhanced professional development opportunities. A little over a year ago we renamed our national webinar series, “Our Members Speak!” to encourage our fellow ACP members and our Strategic Partner thought leaders to share their knowledge and experience. The webinars averaged 1-2/month and attracted anywhere from 40-200 attendees. Topics ranged from industry survey data to specific risk and resilience topics (e.g. cyber security, exercise development, planning tools, etc.) to resilience professionals and professional development. Dr. Roberta LaRocca (Chair), Fred Rogers and Dr. Ed Goldberg co-host these informative sessions. Recordings of the webinars are available on the ACP National website (www.acp-international.com) as well as a calendar for Upcoming Events. One of our major accomplishments was offering members and guests a chance to attend one or both ACP regional conferences. Greater Tampa Bay hosted its 3^rd 1-day event in January, and our Northeast Chapters hosted their 3^rd 1-day event in June in New York City.  A special thank you to all of those who participated in the planning and execution of these successful events!

Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

In 2024, the Association of Continuity Professionals (ACP) launched its Special Interest

Group (SIG) Initiative to support professionals in continuity, resilience, and risk through

collaboration, mentorship, and sector-specific programming across industry sectors.

In 2025, we launched the following SIG’s:  Early Careerist, Cybersecurity, Finance / Banking, and Healthcare.  We also began a partnership with Continuity Insights to host all SIG events.  Based on the success and positive feedback received, we will expand our SIG portfolio to include Education, Government and Retail.

Many thanks to Dr. Bernard Jones who leads the SIG initiative and serves as Chair of the SIG Steering Committee. If you have any questions or would like to join a SIG, please contact Dr. Jones directly at jonesB1@stjohns.edu.

Strategic Partnerships Committee

This Committee is charged with the creation and maintenance of partnerships with organizations seeking to enhance their recognition and visibility by the Association’s members and stakeholders and resulting in new sources of non-dues revenue. The success of this Committee in identifying new sponsorship commitments and maintaining a similar commitment from our existing partners allows ACP to significantly expand the current scope of services and identify new sources of value-added membership benefits. 

My thanks to James Mitchell (Chair), David Brady, Paul McGonigal, and Kelly Williams for significantly expanding the number of Strategic Partners.

Strategic Partners

Our Strategic Partners play a major role in supporting our Association’s health. It comes in many forms such as financial support for both National and Chapters, complimentary conference passes and meeting space, and promotion through marketing and communications.

We are extremely pleased that Group C Media / Continuity Insights has agreed to be one of our Strategic Partners. Our partnership includes hosting our Special Interest Group meetings, meeting space at the Continuity Insights Management Conference and promotion of ACP on their website.

DRJ has been one of our key Strategic Partners by providing complimentary conference passes to DRJ Spring and DRJ Fall, an ACP booth in the expo hall, and meeting space for the Chairman’s Table and post-DRJ Chapter meetings.

Finance Committee

The financial results for the year ending December 31, 2025, reflected an overall positive variance as compared to budgetary projections. To a large degree the fiscal success of the Association and a positive bottom line resulted from stable membership with retention of our current members as a foundation and supplemented by the steady addition of new members. Due to significant market head winds, our non-dues revenue did not meet our expectations. However, we continue to maintain exceptionally strong partnerships with significant organizations in the resilience segment. Expenses for the year were also well below budgetary expectations because of careful monitoring and fiscal stewardship by the Board of Directors corporately. Based on what we have experienced this year, while maintaining existing and developing new partnerships, we will also intensify the great work noted elsewhere in this report regarding new chapter development and Special Interest Groups as a means of increasing revenue more organically. Michelle Vickers was appointed to the Board with the intent of her serving as Treasurer in 2026 and trained with James Mitchell (2025 Treasurer) for 6 months.

Internal Operations

Association Management Services were provided by Raleigh, NC-based FirstPoint Management Resources (“FPMR”).  ACP’s Statement of Work agreement with FPMR is reviewed annually to ensure our members receive the level of satisfaction they expect.

If you have any customer concerns, please contact me at mjgifford10@gmail.com or reach out to one of our National Board members.

ACP Book of Best Practices, 3^rd Edition

One of our 2025 success stories was the creation of the “ACP Book of Best Practices 3^rd Edition: Important Topics Within Resiliency.” It contains continuity professional best practices, real life examples, and empirical guidance.  Dr. Bernard Jones along with Dr. Roberta LaRocca and Dr. Ed Goldberg coordinated the publication of the ACP Book of Best Practices, 3^rd Edition (BP3).  This book is a collection of 17 Chapters ranging from Business Continuity Management, Cyber Security, Emergency Management, People, and Resilience with special contributions by David Halford (FusionRM), Bob Arnold (DRJ), and Regina Phelps. We are extremely pleased for the generosity of Fusion Risk Management who sponsored BP3 and Continuity Insights for publishing it on their website. It allowed every ACP member and other practitioners to receive a complimentary copy!

Special Chapter Recognition

As many Chapters continue to recognize the outstanding contributions made by an individual member through the Most Valuable Player award, the National Board also recognized two Chapters for their exceptional performance. It was my pleasure to present the ACP Chapter of the Year award to Polly James, President, of the Greater Tampa Bay Chapter.  As one of ACP’s largest Chapter’s they continue to set the pace with their innovative programs and professional development opportunities, including the annual 1-day conference held at the Event Space - Greater Tampa Bay International Airport. The ACP Comeback Chapter of the Year award was presented to Carsen Lasley, President, Mid-Tennessee (Nashville) Chapter. In June, Carson stepped up to be Chapter President to restart his Chapter, and they have grown from 19 to over 30 members, making tremendous strides in a short period of time.

Meet Your 2026 Leadership Team

I am extremely grateful to all the volunteer National and Chapter Leaders for their leadership and dedication to our members and to their respective communities.  As we begin 2026, we are fortunate to have a very experienced and diverse leadership team.  Members of the 2026 Board are: Lori Adamo, Scott Balentine, Avery Church, Michael Gifford (Chairman), Gail Moraton, Beth Hastings, Dr. Bernard Jones, Dr. Robbie LaRocca (Secretary), Lance Lynch, Cathy Robbins, Dawn Turton, and Michelle Vickers (Treasurer).

We said goodbye and thanked James Mitchell, Ron Derrick, Paul McGonigal, and Kelly Williams.  James served as both our Treasurer and Chair of the Strategic Partnership Committee (SPC).  Paul and Kelly were members of the SPC while Ron served as Director-At-Large.

I want to also recognize ACP Lifetime Member David Brady, Silver Loc Associates, who has served as ACP’s Trusted Advisor since 2010. His significant contributions are embedded in our past and future and will always be appreciated.  Dave will be leaving the ACP Leadership Team in March but his enduring love for ACP and his friendship will always be an acknowledged part of ACP’s history.

The Road Ahead

This year we have achieved our goals and objectives through the dedication and commitment of our National and Chapter Leaders.  We can be proud of our accomplishments! We provided professional development opportunities through Our Members Speak, Special Interest Groups, and regional conferences. 

Our theme for 2026 is “The Future of Resiliency” which is also the theme for the ACP Book of Best Practices, 4^th Edition.  Please consider contributing a Chapter! We will continue our focus on membership retention and growth, Chapter development, ACP’s financial health, and further implementing our SIG strategy.

I want to thank all of our Strategic Partners for their continued support of ACP. 

In his farewell comments to the National Board, David Brady said “The last five years have presented additional challenges to ACP and, in fact, the non-profit community. Much has changed in how individuals learn, network, and pursue career goals and objectives. This will require new ways of thinking and an increased level of responsiveness in order to provide our members and stakeholders with the value-added services they require in order to be successful both personally and professionally.”  I think we all need to remember his perspective as we go forward.

I am looking forward to great 2026! Thank you for your dedication and commitment to the Association of Continuity Professionals.

Michael Gifford

Chairman of the Board

Previous Annual Reports From Our Chairman