NFPA Board Meets; Begins Planning for Next 3-Year Strategy Agenda
By Eric Lanke, NFPA President/CEO
Back in June, our then-new Board chair, David Price of QCC, wrote about the discussions held at the Board’s annual strategic retreat, and many of the networking, education and promotional programs NFPA organizes to strengthen the fluid power industry:
These many programs are carefully organized into NFPA’s broader Strategy Agenda, a plan that comprises the outcomes we seek to achieve for our members:
- Effective Forum: NFPA provides an effective forum where its members and OEMs network and advance our collective interests.
- Business Intelligence & Statistics: NFPA provides its members with timely and accurate business intelligence and statistics that support improved decision-making.
- Promote Fluid Power: NFPA provides opportunities and resources for its members to promote the unique strengths and inherent advantages offered by fluid power technology.
- Educated Workforce: NFPA helps increase the number of technical college and university students educated in fluid power and connects them to careers in the fluid power industry.
Now it’s October, and the NFPA Board has reconvened for its first meeting of the fiscal year in order to review our progress on those strategic initiatives and to begin looking ahead to our new three-year Strategy Agenda, which will guide our efforts in 2026-29. Here are some highlights of that discussion.
- Effective Forum and Business Intelligence. We have seen much success in these areas over the current three-year plan. Our membership is up and broadly represents a high percentage of the fluid power market and supply chain. Members are highly engaged in our key programs here, including the Annual Conference, the Industry and Economic Outlook Conference, and our participation-based market information programs. Looking ahead to our next three-year plan, we will be digging more deeply into the connections between each specific member type and their use and access to our conferences and market information programs. A greater focus on returning value to our small and medium-sized business members will likely drive some of our metrics of success.
- Promote Fluid Power. We have seen tremendous growth in our programs that help promote fluid power in the current three-year plan. Through our ISO and ANSI standardization committees, and especially through our Roadmap Committee and its Technology Task Forces, we have expanded the number of technology forums that we’ve held, educating the market on cutting-edge fluid power technologies. Our podcast continues to receive more downloads every year, and the growth of our Technology Conferences at customer market trade shows has been particularly impactful. Our new partnership with the iVT EXPO trade show has opened additional pathways for our members to reach OEMs in fluid power’s core customer markets. Looking ahead to our next three-year plan, we will likely seek to increase the cross-fertilization across these many programs and opportunities, and to expand their reach and connection with OEMs.
- Educated Workforce. Through the NFPA Foundation, we have successfully built a number of pathways through which members can source technical and engineering talent for their businesses. We are on the cusp of achieving our stated goal for the current three-year plan: six Fast Track Technical Colleges and twelve Power Partner Universities up and running and producing talented graduates for the fluid power industry. A major success in these efforts has been the growth of our Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, which this year will see a record number of 32 schools participating. Looking ahead to our next three-year plan, the emphasis will likely be on deepening the impact of these schools and the programs they engage in. Finding ways to further promote fluid power on these campuses and to connect their students to more of our members will be a key success metrics.
Our Board is a high-functioning group, and focused on the issues of direct importance to the membership and to the broader fluid power industry. As an NFPA member, I encourage you to get engaged in these key initiatives, as each will help you better connect across the changing supply chain and source the talent you need for continued growth and expansion. Please contact me at elanke@nfpa.com if you’d like to learn more about any of these opportunities.
The Board’s next meeting will be in February 2026 in conjunction with the NFPA Annual Conference.