Association of Aquatic Professionals

We provide life jackets and swim lesson grants to communities to help support the drowning prevention message. Our main goal in everything that we do is to educate professionals and the public on safe practices in and around water.

We strive to educate professionals and the public on drowning prevention education and how to run and operate facilities in a safe fashion. Also, to educate the public on water safety in general. Our overall goal is safety in and around the water. Water meaning and body of water from pools, rivers, open water, ponds, rivers, streams, home water sources such as buckets of water, bathrooms, bathtubs, basically any and all water sources.

A. Mission Statement

“We believe in promoting and supporting the aquatic profession through advocacy, research, and education on aquatic issues and to provide a common forum for members, educators, and aquatic suppliers that contributes to their professional advancement.”


B. Vision Statement:
Description – The vision statement is given in two layers. The first layer is a general statement of vision. The second layer provides more detail on the components of the vision based on the core businesses of the Association.
Level One –
“The AOAP will be the leading organization representing aquatic professionals in advocacy, education, research, and professional collaboration.”
Level Two –
The AOAP will be the leading organization representing aquatic professionals in advocacy, education, research, and professional collaboration. This means that the AOAP will promote:
Advocacy – by getting ahead of issues and being an agent to favorably managing change affecting the aquatic industry, providing a consistent message, provide a respected and credible influence on aquatic issues, create elevated awareness for areas of concern, and presenting positions that are publicly valued.
Education – by increasing public awareness of the aquatic field, raising aquatic safety awareness, hosting compliant facilities training, demonstrating aquatic activities return on investment, and hosting forums to present non-biased information to the public and legislative bodies.
Research – promotion of current, fact-based solutions (scientific process) on aquatic issues and solutions, coordinate the investigative process that establishes resources to initiate innovation and better aquatic business practices.
Professional Collaboration – by providing a forum promoting an inclusive networking environment that fosters open idea exchanges, supportive relationships, shared goals, leadership development, and consensus building.
C. Values
The AOAP Board of Directors team will serve the Association with the following values:
“We care about our members, our profession, and the customers our members serve. We do this with integrity, respect, trustworthiness, and dedication to egoless, purpose based leadership.”

We are proudly meeting these goals annually and we continue to grow our partnerships and collaborations with various groups.

We are the one stop shop for drowning prevention and pool code information. Our association continues to grow and get our message out there. We currently have a FREE weekly on-line newsletter that goes out to over 26,400+ individuals and that grows weekly as, again, it is free.

We provide on-line education on drowning prevention, risk management, legal liability, programming, facility operations and management and daily operations. We also developed an Aquatic Professional Designation for professionals within the field. https://www.splash-edu.org/courses/aquatic-professional-designation-aqp

We continually review our strategies and how we are getting the word out there. We participate in various radio interviews throughout the year and we promote FREE sessions during our conference for the public that cover drowning prevention initiatives.

As stated above we have been on a mission to provide drowning prevention education, life jackets and swim lesson grants and our accomplishments have even surprised us in the mere 10 years that we have been around. We are so very excited to see what the future will bring. Our goal is to not have any more non-fatal or fatal drownings! We will continue to educate everyone on the dangers of water for children and non-swimmers and promote the importance of learn to swim programs and life jackets for all non-swimmers or not strong swimmers.