Where Does Your Money Go?

In consideration of continuing your vital support or if you are contributing to our NSA family for the first time, we invite you to understand and celebrate what your resources and encouragement have helped to provide for thousands of individuals and will continue to do so. 

Publications and Information

• Letting Go, NSA’s newsletter, has been distributed to thousands within and outside of the NSA since 1981.  LG has created broad-based awareness of and support for those who stutter and helps break self-imposed isolation, too often a lifetime by-product of stuttering.  The personal accounts of people’s victories over stuttering encourages self-acceptance and self-esteem throughout LG’s reading audience.  LG also provides the latest research, therapy options, coping management strategies and is often the only connection to the stuttering community for those not in speech therapy or geographically distanced from a support group.
   
• Family Voices is NSA’s newsletters for kids, teens, parents, SLPs and others who support them.  All of the articles written by members of the NSA who are excited to tell their story or share information about stuttering.  This newsletter is published quarterly by which hard copies are snail-mailed to NSA members or viewed for free online.  The teen section is a powerful avenue to read stories, poems and experiences written by and for young adults and their parents.  The Stutter Buddy letters further aids our community outreach and awareness program by touching children, age 6-12, giving them a place to share ideas, read what other kids say about stuttering, and most importantly learning that they are not alone at a critical young age.  Family Voices is distributed to kids, teens and parents but also throughout the speech professional community.  It also includes submissions from experts in childhood stuttering treatment and solicits contributions from parents who share their experiences and feelings, especially as they seek advocacy for their children who need qualified speech therapy.  It is a collaboration of three former newsletters: Stutter Buddies, C.A.R.E. (Connections, Advocacy, Resources and Education) and Our Voices.   

• Distribution of information on stuttering to parents, speech therapists, schools, hospitals, and to adults who stutter, as evidenced by over 700,000 pieces of literature, 9000 posters and over 4000 audiocassettes since NSA’s inception.

• Our Toll-free Hotline, 800-WE STUTTER, is a highly frequented tool used by public citizens, professionals and the membership and is often the first courageous contact to the stuttering community for people who stutter and their families desperate to change their lives. 

• NSA has published several books on stuttering.  Three, in particular, How to Conquer Your Fears of Speaking Before People, Understanding and Controlling Stuttering, More Friends for Jackson and launched in late 2001, an exciting new publication, Preschool Children Who Stutter:  Information and Support for Parents – 5 Steps to Help Your Child is in significant demand.  Several universities use NSA publications as texts and the NSA makes available through the website the opportunity to purchase dozens more.
   
• The NSA Website (www.WeStutter.Org) remains our bloodline for connection with membership, friends, family and future consumers of our ever-increasing services and resources, both domestically and internationally.  The NSA Store also offers fun opportunities to purchase merchandise and informational products.

Support

• The NSA’s backbone is its network of over 80 support chapters located in 38 states, the lifeline of thousands of NSA members, friends, families, professionals and new consumers.  This voluntary network operates at the local level with administrative support from the national organization. Led by individual chapter leaders in each support group, the NSA is proud of its capability to offer a monthly support meeting under uniform standards in a safe and nurturing environment for all to come and share their experiences, emotions and challenges in a culture of encouragement and friendship for one another touched by stuttering.  Chapter Leader manuals and guidelines are offered by the NSA, new chapters are continually encouraged and solicited to enable our message to reach as many as possible geographically, and contact information is made available through the national website, the Hotline number and contacts with the National Office for those seeking a support group at the local level.
   
• The NSA has hosted 29 consecutive annual conferences, targeting a different host city throughout the United States in order to broaden the opportunity for attendance nationally.  This dynamic three-day event brings together adults and children who stutter, parents, family members and leading speech professional experts in stuttering therapy and research.  Attendance draws between 300 – 600 individuals and offers numerous workshops, attracts nationally-prominent keynote speakers, and critical recognition for many key volunteers and friends to the organization, including induction into the Stuttering Hall of Fame for those who have made a lifelong contribution to the stuttering community.

• Several Regional Adult Workshops are sponsored by the NSA throughout the country, facilitated by membership and experts.  Additionally, our Youth Day Workshops for Children Who Stutter and Their Parents, created in 1987, educates families and local professionals, including speech clinicians and preschool teachers on early diagnosis and effective intervention strategies for children who stutter.  Since inception, the NSA has conducted over 800 workshops for people who stutter in 50 cities nationwide.

• One of the NSA’s primary missions is to support the child who stutters.  The NSA offers significant resources of information to children of all ages, their families and to educators regarding the facts and truths of stuttering, strategies for handling teasing and bullying, and opportunities for children to meet and connect with others their age challenged by stuttering.
   
• The NSA partners with many speech-language pathologists around the country who are dedicated to helping people who stutter and their families.  The NSA provides through its website an opportunity for children, families and adults to ask a team of experts any question about stuttering.  
   
• An Internet listserv is provided for NSA members in leadership positions at the local level to remain in daily contact, share information, seek help and support, and communicate organizational needs.
   
• Participation in international conferences of various stuttering organizations as well as the hosting of the Third International Convention for People Who Stutter in 1992, drawing over 500 people from around the globe.

Advocacy and Education

• The NSA offers referrals to certified speech-language pathologists for parents who seek professional therapy for their children.  We also provide legal rights information to parents and families regarding school-based therapy.
   
• The NSA, at federal, state and local levels, serves as advocates for people who stutter.
   
• The NSA devotes significant help to supporting people who stutter in the workplace.  Often considered one of stuttering’s toughest challenges, occupational consequences can be overcome through NSA’s information resources for employers such as the new NSA’s Employer Handbook, providing educational information about stuttering and guidelines to interact with an employee who stutters.  
   
• The NSA reaches out to physicians, particularly pediatricians, to offer convenient and immediate information contact cards for the physician to refer families to various resources for speech and language intervention, including the NSA.
   
• The NSA is proud of its successful school in-service program which provides education and resources to school based speech-language pathologists and educators at local and national levels since 1989.  This rewarding program addresses the need that intervention, on a broad-based scale, and education in the schools is necessary.  The NSA further fulfills our obligation to help school clinicians become more effective with the constraints of their employment settings through our Continuing Education Program.  This program is a commitment to providing school clinicians and educators with opportunities to learn together about the most effective ways to support the child who stutters while enhancing the child’s academic and social experiences.
   
• In 1996, we compiled an educational handbook describing how to organize our publicized Year of the Child Who Stutters programs.  Duplicated since then, these programs have assisted many consumer and professional organizations and today this model is used all over the world.
• The NSA has distributed over 17,000 public service announcements to newspapers, radio, and television stations.  Our leaders, both nationally and at the local support level, routinely lecture on stuttering to school leaders, civic groups, graduate speech-language pathology students, and in several media venues.  The NSA participated as a technical consultant on the portrayal of stuttering in a made for television series for NBC.
• The NSA has worked closely in partnership with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) to establish specialty certification for speech-language pathologies who wish to specialize in stuttering.
• The NSA is accredited by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) as an official Continuing Education (CE) provider. The NSA sponsors many seminars and workshops throughout the year for professional speech-language pathologists to increase their knowledge about stuttering.
• The NSA has taken our message into the national forum through a number of campaigns to speak out for the rights of people who stutter and to correct the significant misconception the pubic maintains about chronic stuttering.  We successfully lobbied Congress to enact “National Stuttering Awareness Week,” which is celebrated at both the national and local levels through many local campaigns by local support chapters to increase public awareness about stuttering at the community level.

Research

• The NSA supports research on stuttering through its Research Committee which facilitates interaction and collaboration between scientists and people who stutter.  Under strict participation guidelines, the NSA has approved numerous research projects in recent years and encourages interaction among NSA membership at the local level and researchers.  As a result, we have established quality research partnerships with noted scientists and clinicians.