TDWG Treasurer's Report: financial policies and investment proposals
Chandra Earl
The short versionTDWG is financially stable but not growing its membership; the treasurer proposes codified policies, an endowment and investments to fund outreach and sustainability.
What this was about
Chandra Earl presented TDWG's finances and a new draft accounting and financial policies document that codifies practice for future treasurers. Membership brings about $18,000 a year and annual meetings roughly $10,000 net of publishing costs, against about $7,500 in regular expenses, so net revenue is about $17,500 a year. Individual membership is stagnant and institutional membership grows by only about 0.8 institutions a year. She proposed keeping $55,500 in operating cash plus an equal emergency fund in money-market funds, creating a $50,000 restricted endowment and investing the remaining $139,000 long term, for an estimated $48,000 a year. The money could support outreach, meeting hosts, member-only programming and named awards.
Why it matters. For a volunteer-run standards body, sustainable finances and membership growth underpin all its standards work; the proposals would change how TDWG funds community activities.
In the room
- A draft accounting and financial policies document codifies current practice so knowledge isn't held by one or two people; it will be public.
- Average of about 64 individual and 171 institutional (x5) memberships per year.
- Revenue: ~$18,000/year from dues; annual meetings average ~$18,000, or ~$10,000 excluding included publishing costs. Beijing and Kenya lost money; Oslo's apparent $177,000 is because bills are unpaid, and it is expected to break even.
- Regular expenditures ~$7,000-7,500/year; Pensoft contract base fee ~$3,000; net ~$17,500/year.
- Proposals: 100% operating reserve ($55,500), a matching short-term money-market emergency fund, a $50,000 restricted endowment, $139,000 in long-term investments; projected ~$48,000/year.
- Ideas for use: funding outreach and the Time and Place subcommittee (e.g. host honoraria), member-only materials, a named endowment for travel/research awards, community support fund or newsletter.
- A donate button is now on the TDWG website.
Notable moments
Transcript
Automatically generated captions can contain mistakes, especially in names and technical terms. Times are relative to the room recording.
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