S2:E9 Coffee Conversations - Celebrating 25 Years of the Roofing Alliance

By Colin Sheehan, RCS Reporter. 

Learn the history of the Roofing Alliance and how it continues to advance the industry through education, research and philanthropy. 

Several Roofing Alliance leaders came together for the first Coffee Conversations of 2021 to celebrate the Alliance’s 25-year anniversary and to share stories about the organization and its history. The Roofing Alliance was the first organization to bring together all parts of the roofing industry and has significantly aided in advancing the industry through funding research, education, philanthropic initiatives and technological programs.  

Bennett Judson, who usually works behind the scenes, joined in on the celebration by sharing the organization’s origins. Bennett explained that the Roofing Alliance came out of a need to provide more than the National Roofing Foundation (the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA)'s original education and research foundation) could at the time.  

In 1995, the NRCA Board hired an outside consultant to conduct research to see if there was an interest within industry members for a new organization that would address common concerns and fund research, education and philanthropic programs. The report strongly favored creating a new organization and soon after Melvin Kruger began the fundraising effort to create the Roofing Industry Alliance for Progress. 

“Our mission at that time was to provide oversight and fund projects that would advance the roofing industry with a focus on education and training, philanthropy, technology and research,” said Bennett. “Fast forward to 2018, we went through a rebranding phase. We revamped our media outreach, we increased our social media and stepped into technology. We shortened our name to Roofing Alliance and added the tagline of, ‘The foundation of NRCA,’ so everyone understood that connection. That's a very abbreviated version of our history that brings us to 2021 and our celebrating our 25th anniversary.” 

Bill Good, a former CEO of NRCA joined the conversation to talk about why he loves Roofing Alliance. He finds the relationships currently being cultivated with construction management schools as one of his favorite aspects of the Alliance’s work and educational initiatives.  

“I’m going to be teaching a class this afternoon at Clemson,” said Bill, “which is in year two of a class, the only one in the history of the world that we know that’s a college-level, four-credit class in roofing. Eventually, there will be three classes taught here that will lead to a certificate in roofing accreditation, which is really incredible.”  

Read, Listen or Watch the full Coffee Conversations to learn more about this history of the Roofing Alliance and how their impact on the roofing industry.