Greetings, NGPA Family, and happy January!

Chilly temps in my neck of the woods have me longing for the warmth of the California desert. Luckily, the Palm Springs Winter Warm-Up is just a few weeks away, and your Events Team is ready to welcome you all back to SoCal! Registration is open, and space remains, so I encourage you to grab your spot before we sell out! I wanted to talk about the costs and pricing of our Palm Springs events this year. We have received some member questions regarding our pricing structure for The Winter Warm-Up, and I wanted to provide some more context on how we arrived at our member pricing of $399.

It’s no secret that the cost of goods, services, and experiences is up considerably from just one year ago. You see it at the grocery store, restaurants, airports, department stores, heck, everywhere. Inflation is real, and our organization and events have not been immune. But that’s not all. As an event attendee, it is sometimes difficult to see all the additional costs incurred when you aren’t involved in those details. (Thanks, Events Team!) The price you pay for dinner and a few beverages at an event is only a tiny part of that total event cost. For instance, the PSP Dinner Banquet—NGPA not only pays a per-person price for the food each attendee eats, but we also have substantial expenses for event space rental, banquet staff, audio/visual, entertainment, security, and more! Like a TSwift concert, you think you are just paying to hear her sweet melodies. However, in reality, you are covering expenses for travel, stage movement, lighting, sound, meals for local crews, security, insurance, etc.

There is so much that goes into the planning and execution of our Palm Springs event (and all our events), which have costs that exceed what we pass on to our membership. Our NGPA sponsors do so much to help soften our prices to members, and we can’t thank them enough for that support. Once fees for all our Winter Warm-Up events are broken down from Friday night's Starlight Reception to the Saturday Airport Brunch, to the Saturday Gala & Flight Deck Reception to the Sunday Drag Brunch, our total cost to NGPA per attendee is $748. With the incredible support of our NGPA sponsors, we can take that ticket cost down to $399 for our members.

Many of you remember past Palm Springs NGPA events where only 150 of our members gathered in a backyard munching on cheese trays and cocktail meatballs and sipping on beverages mixed by our own events team volunteers. I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the simplicity of those days, but we have grown up, and our impact across the LGBTQ+ aviation community has grown our membership ranks exponentially. With that growth has come change to the structure of our events to ensure we can continue providing the spaces necessary for our members and potential members to come into our NGPA Family as their most authentic selves and feel welcome, empowered, and loved!

I can’t thank you all enough for continuing to support NGPA- an organization we all love. Through your membership, your event attendance, and your additional financial support, we continue to have an enormous impact on LGBTQ+ people across aviation. Our membership growth and increased support from aviation industry partners prove that what we do as an organization is empowering and worthwhile. Thank you for being a part of our journey and, more importantly, being a part of our NGPA Family. If you have any further questions or concerns regarding our event pricing structure or just want to say hi and chat, my email and phone line are always open! I would love to hear from you. Until next time and I look forward to seeing you all in Palm Springs!

Brian Gambino

President, NGPA