President's Message

Bob Armbruster, President GA DECA FoundationThank you for visiting the Georgia DECA Foundation website today. Our mission is one of fundraising to support Georgia DECA chapters and students having financial needs to participate in DECA’s internationally recognized leadership program. We are an independent 501C3 corporation whose tax-deductible donations come from corporations, chapters, advisors, students, and folks like yourself. Our distributions go directly to Georgia chapters and students through our ASPIRE Fund and do not support the day to day operations of Georgia DECA.

Georgia DECA is a state Chapter of DECA, a 72 year old co-curricular student organization with over 227,000 high school students in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and 12 countries around the globe. Georgia DECA’s membership this school year is almost 12500 in 153 chapters around the state. Georgia remains fourth largest state chapter in DECA wo3ld-wide and four of its chapters in Forsyth County, South Forsyth, West Forsyth, Lambert, and Forsyth Central rank among the ten largest individual chapters world-wide.

As the school year winds down, the Georgia DECA contingent numbering 769, just returned from DECA’s annual international conference(ICDC) in Orlando. Academies were packed and students competed for over $300,000 in scholarships. Here are some results for Georgia DECA students…Overall attendance, approximately 22,000(a record)… 33 Top 20 Finalists… 13 Top Ten Finalists… 4 National Scholarship Recipients… 10 Emerging Leadership Awards and 188 Leadership Academy Participants…AWESOME!

Guess what? It’s time to start all over again for next year. Our emphasis is to get more local businesses involved perhaps in the classroom assisting teachers, or mentoring students in project assignments, or in becoming state and/or local sponsors. There is a place for you. Just contact your local high school and ask to speak with the DECA Advisor. You may also contact me directly for sponsorship opportunities.

We value the fact you visited today. Please take a few moments to look us over. Thank you for the continued support of our current partners and we look forward to adding new ones. We always accept donations by the way, using the “donate” button in the upper right corner of this page. Please designate us as your “charity of choice” when shopping Amazon and E-Bay.

Thanks again for your valuable time and we hopefully look forward to hearing from you. Sincere best wishes for meaningful celebrations during the upcoming Holiday season. Enjoy its spirit and sounds along with the love of family. Merry Christmas everybody.

-Bob Armbruster, Board Chair & President
GA DECA Foundation, Inc.
bobarmbruster@gadeca.org