The U.S. Army is accepting a donation of more than $1 million for the travel and lodging of soldiers attending a professional development conference in Washington next week, as active-duty forces prepare to potentially miss paychecks amid the government shutdown, officials tell Military Times.

The donation will allow hundreds of soldiers to have the opportunity to attend and participate in the annual conference of the Association of the United States Army, a nonprofit professional development association that serves the military service branch, according to AUSA’s deputy director of media operations Tom McCuin.

McCuin declined to comment on the amount of money donated by the non-profit but said it was “sufficient to cover all the travelers that the Army had planned ahead of time to bring

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