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One of my favorite movie scenes ever is from Night Shift when Michael Keaton first meets his new work colleague, Henry Winkler.   As the character, Billy “Blaze”, Keaton exclaims, “See, I’m an idea man, I get ideas all day long, I can’t control them.  It’s like, they come charging in, I can’t even fight them if I wanted to.”  There are days when I find that I can relate to that character.

So, today I was thinking about how Mark Zuckerberg announced that he plans to give away some $45 billion, give or take a million.  Apparently, he’s one of the group of billionaires that signed “The Giving Pledge” along with folks like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and Rich Cavoto who plan to give away more than half their fortune over their lifetime.  I am embarrassed to admit I know very little about where all the money goes that these people pledge.  I did read a little, little bit about what Zuckerberg intends to do with his money.  I read that his newly formed LLC,  has “the mission of advancing human potential and promoting equality”, and will be administered by the CEO himself. Advancing human potential and promoting equality sound terrific.  Selfishly, I want to know why some of these wildly rich philanthropists don’t donate money to rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure or mundane things like that, but working on human potential has some merit.  A lot of their contributions seem to be geared towards education.  And, that’s when it hit me…the fastener industry needs to hit up Zuckerberg, Buffet and Branson for funding for the Fastener Education Foundation!  You ask, “what is the Fastener Education Foundation”?

The Fastener Education Foundation (FEF) is a non-profit foundation developed to help fund fastener related education.  On their website, it continues, “The vision of FEF is to assist the fastener industry to insure long-term sustainability in Human Resources”.   Let me channel my inner Billy Blaze and try to put it into other terms that someone like I can understand (and, I sure hope I don’t poorly misrepresent this):

“Look, somebody’s got to run those header machines.  And sure, you can google anything, but young people still need to know a nut from a bolt.  And, who wakes up one morning and says, ‘gee, I think I want to work in the fastener industry?’…yeah, no one.  We’ve got to recruit people, train people and show them how to make, use and sell the right bolts for the right job.  And you know, at the end of the day it’s not a bad way to make a living.”

On a more serious note, an industry friend who runs a manufacturing plant recently shared with me, “if my company is out of business in ten years it will be because I cannot find capable people to run my machines”.  Wow, not foreign competition, not pricing pressure, not government intervention, but people.  I think this is the kind of situation that the Fastener Education Foundation hopes to address.

Honestly, I know just a little about the FEF, but I think it is a fairly new organization still getting the word out.  If this sounds interesting to you, take a look at their website at www.fastenereducationfound.org.  I’m no more an expert on the FEF than I am on the Gates Foundation.  However, I am an active member of the fastener community and through this industry I have manged to make a living.  For that reason alone, I want to take some time to learn more about their mission.

If anyone wants to correct or speak further on anything I’ve mentioned regarding the FEF, please respond.   If you’d like revisit Michael Keaton’s role in Night Shift, here you go.