We will finish our look behind the scenes at the ASA (or under the hood – I’ve been freely mixing metaphors) with a discussion of funding. How is the ASA funded, and how do we spend the money?
The American Statistical Association is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, duly incorporated in the State of Massachusetts. The audited financial statements of the ASA are published each year in Amstat News (see, for example, the June 2013 issue, beginning on page 10).
The ASA’s 2014 budget is about $8.8 million. The association’s primary revenue sources are meetings (29%), membership (20%), publications (which includes Amstat News advertising) (20%), section activities (6%), and education (4%). The remainder comes from a variety of sources. Among those I want to mention the ASA’s annual fund, by which members are generously supporting the ASA’s activities through charitable giving.
On what do we spend this money? In brief, we spend it to promote the practice and profession of statistics (the ASA’s tagline). All of the activities of the ASA that you are reading about in this blog are connected to our mission and funded from our budget. We focus our resources through our strategic plan.
Not surprisingly, our biggest expenses are for meetings (JSM and CSP), publications (journals, Amstat News, and so on). Those two categories account for about 32% of our expenses. Another 8% goes to general expenses associated with membership. We devote about 21% of our budget to outreach, public relations, support of chapters and sections, advancing the profession, and special initiatives (you read about these in this blog and in Amstat News), and another 5% of our budget to advancing education. The remainder is spent on a variety of smaller activities and in the general operation of the association.
People are often surprised by two things about the ASA’s budget. First, membership dues cover only about one fifth of the gross revenue of the association. Membership is, of course, THE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of the ASA. What is an association without members? Members are the reason for the society and its very life blood. But membership dues are not covering most of the cost of the association’s activities. (This, by the way, is very common in professional societies.)
This leads to the second surprise. The ASA is a non-profit organization, and this is sometimes interpreted as meaning that we need to break even on every enterprise and on the entire enterprise. The reality is that some of our activities (meetings and publications, for example) bring in revenue that exceeds expenses, and that excess revenue supports other important activities whose costs exceed their revenue (education and advocacy, for example). And if the ASA makes a profit in any given year, that money goes into reserves and is available to be spent by the association to meet its needs in future years. In other words, being a non-profit means that our funds stay with the association to be used by the association. We use surplus revenues to fulfill our mission, not to pay dividends to stockholders.
Careful management of the ASA’s budget is the responsibility of the staff and the Board of Directors. Staff and the Board Budget Committee spend considerable time each spring preparing a budget for the coming year. The Board spends a full day each June reviewing that budget, and makes final decision on it at the Joint Statistical Meetings.
In its 175th year, the ASA is in good financial shape thanks to sound leadership and committed members. I would be remiss in writing about the ASA’s finances without thanking Steve Porzio, ASA’s Associate Executive Director and Director of Operations, who has provided sound and thoughtful financial guidance to the ASA for the past 17 years.
In 2014, the American Statistical Association is celebrating its 175th anniversary. Over the course of this year, this blog will highlight aspects of that celebration, and look broadly at the ASA and its activities. Please contact ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein (ron@amstat.org) if you would like to post an entry to this blog.