U.S. Masters Swimming Dorothy Donnelly Service Award

Recipient:	Laura Shoppe
Year:	2023
LMSC:	Pacific

Pacific LMSC member Laura Shope served as her LMSC’s Treasurer. She used her accounting and bookkeeping skills to manage the Pacific Masters finances. Reconciling the account regularly, she provided easy to read financial reports for monthly board meetings. Laura prepared the annual budget, managed the reserves, and prepared a multi-page 990 IRS tax filing, not the simple post return used by most LMSCs. Because of Laura, the Pacific LMSC’s financial operations are balanced and transparent. Anyone who reviewed them would think they were professionally managed. They are, but the Pacific LMSC gets the work for free and all 10,000+ of the LMSC’s members benefit. Laura did this with ease and because of her expertise, USMS asked her to help another LMSC catch up when it had failed to submit required IRS filings for several years. She also was a 3-year member of the USMS Finance Committee (2106-2018) and a 2-year member of the USMS Audit Committee (2022-present).