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Vol.30 No.1, January 1998

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Report on the Financial Status of ACM SIGCHI

Budget Process
Income and Expenses
Current Financial Status
Contact Person

The members of SIGCHI pay yearly dues as well as conference fees and subscription fees for SIGCHI publications. As members you should understand where your money goes. In this article, I will explain the SIGCHI budget process, and give you the FY 97 financial status and the FY98 budget

Budget Process

SIGCHI's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. The budget for the upcoming year is determined the previous December. This means that by the time you read this article, the 1999 budget will have been drafted and approved. Work starts on the budget process in October. The draft of the budget is a joint effort. The ACM SIGCHI Program Director and the SIGCHI Vice-Chair for Finance (me) compile the budget with guidance from the ACM SIG Financial Manager. The budget includes allocations for membership, publications, and conferences. SIGCHI also allocates a certain percentage of its budget to ACM. In return, ACM supports us in the conduct of our business.

Proposals are solicited from the Extended Executive Committee to support new or ongoing projects. The Extended Executive Committee includes the elected SIGCHI officers (Executive Committee) plus any advisory or adjunct chairs appointed by the SIGCHI Chair. SIGCHI members are welcome to submit proposals for programs by working with the appropriate member of this extended committee. A list of extended committee members is in the front of the SIGCHI Bulletin and also on the SIGCHI website (http://www.acm.org/sigchi). If you have an idea for a program that you would like to see implemented, you will need to work through a member of the Extended Executive Committee. If you are unsure of which member to work through, please contact me.

Also included in the budget is an allocation for special programs. Special programs are programs that advance the professional goals of SIGCHI. An example of such a program is the development fund proposal for HCI educational program. A group of volunteers is working to compile HCI materials and resource lists that can be used by educators. SIGCHI members may submit development fund proposals three times a year. Guidelines and dates for submission can be found at http://www.acm.org/sigchi/documents/devfund.html

The Executive Committee votes on the budget at the December meeting. Proposals submitted from the Extended Executive Committee are rank-ordered in case we do not have sufficient funds to cover all of them. The budget is reviewed quarterly. Actual spending is compared with budgeted spending and adjustments are made as needed.

Income and Expenses

SIGCHI is a sub-unit of ACM, a non-profit organization. This means that any profit realized by SIGCHI is re-invested in our programs and services. Our non-profit status exempts us from paying federal taxes on any income. In certain states in the United States, we are also exempt from state taxes on goods and services.

The major budget categories for SIGCHI are membership, publications, and conferences. The goal is for each of these categories to be self-supporting; that is, each category should generate enough income to cover expenses. In the membership category, member dues generate income. Expenses are incurred by projects to attract new members, such as the student kits distributed last year, membership brochures, and ads in CACM and interactions. Publication income comes from subscriptions and sales of single publications of the SIGCHI Bulletin. Expenses are publication fees. Conference income is generated though registration fees and from corporate sponsorships. Conference expenses are the operational costs for organizing and conducting the conference. Last year, the conference sponsored a volunteer reception as a thank you to those who have volunteered their time to SIGCHI.

SIGCHI is required by the ACM to have a Reserve Fund to cover any negative financial situations. The amount in the reserve fund varies from year to year as it is based on 50% of SIGCHI's operating funds plus 20% of the conference expenses. SIGCHI's overall budget has increased by almost $1,000,000 since 1991. At the same time our Reserve Fund has quadrupled, thus giving us a secure financial status.

While having a large surplus certainly allows us to feel secure, the budget is planned to balance, not to generate large surpluses. The current surplus has been generated over the past few years by profits from the conferences. On the other hand, we have not been able to implement programs that would consume these resources. Much of this is due to the lack of time on the part of our volunteers to implement these programs. This past year, SIGCHI worked with ACM to contract help for managing our Web page and online resources. A conference manager has also been contracted. SIGCHI is well positioned to allocate additional financial resources to supplement volunteer work with professional staff in order to be able to better serve our members

Current Financial Status

(Note that all amounts are in US dollars.)

Table 1 below summarizes the FY97 status and the FY98 projections.

The CHI Conference budget makes up the largest share of the overall SIGCHI budget at $1,990, 000 for FY98. The conference budget, like other SIGCHI programs, is designed to be self-supporting. Table 2 below shows the surplus of CHI 97 and CHI 96.

Contact Person

I have just started my term as SIGCHI Vice Chair of Finance. I'm excited to be working with a very enthusiastic extended executive committee. We are all interested in improving the SIGCHI experience for our members and are making many plans for new programs to achieve this. Please contact me if you have any questions. My e-mail and phone number can be found on the inside cover of the SIGCHI Bulletin.

Table 1: SIGCHI Financial Results

	FY97 Budgeted	FY97 Actual	FY98 Budgeted
Revenue	2,451,545	2,721,734	2,262,079
Expenses	2,449,184	2,393,238	2,401,292
Surplus	2,361	328,496	(139,213)
Reserve Fund	773,161 (631,200 Required)	1,099,296	960,083 (653,294 Required)

Table 2: Results of CHI 96 and 97

	CHI 96	CHI 97
Income	2,108,97	1,751,997
Expense	1,815,92	1,740,215
Surplus	293,053	11,782

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Vol.30 No.1, January 1998

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