Fwd: draft minutes of the May 13, 2020 council meeting
Dear all,
Looking at the responses, the best time to hold our meeting is October 7 from 3-5 pm.
Please let me know at your earliest convenience if you have any items to include in the agenda for the Fall Council meeting.
All the best,
Ester.
Ester Sztein, PhD
Assistant Director, Board on International Scientific Organizations
Deputy Director, Board on Research Data and Information
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
500 5th Street, NW K504
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-334-3049
Fax: 202-334-2231
Email: esztein@nas.edu
http://national-academies.org/biso
President, Geological Society of Washington
From: Sztein, Ester
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2020 7:25 PM
To: gsw-councilplus-l@minlists.org
Cc: Sztein, Ester
Subject: GSW Fall 2020 council meeting date selection
Dear GSW council members,
I hope that you and yours are doing well, and that I will "see" many of you this evening at our meeting.
It is time to set our Fall Council meeting, and I prepared a Doodle poll with two options on the week of October 5.
Please fill the Doodle poll at your earliest convenience.
https://doodle.com/poll/5i4qcpnp5dax8y29
Also, please let me know if you have any items you'd like to include in the agenda.
All the best,
Ester.
Ester Sztein, PhD
Assistant Director, Board on International Scientific Organizations
Deputy Director, Board on Research Data and Information
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
500 5th Street, NW K504
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-334-3049
Fax: 202-334-2231
Email: esztein@nas.edu
http://national-academies.org/biso
President, Geological Society of Washington
In preparation for the Fall GSW Council Meeting, please find below my Treasurer's Report for the fiscal year that ended 30 June 2020. I am attaching 4 PDFs. Please also see the Action Item at the bottom of this message.
Please turn first to the Income Statement, on which I list inflows and outflows for both the most recent fiscal year (2019/20) and the previous year.
We are still hemorrhaging revenue - membership dues were down 8.5% compared to the prior year, although contributions were slightly up. I do not have a quantitative analysis for this, but just eyeballing the figures I believe we have a significantly larger proportion of the membership this year paying the reduced early-career $15 dues rather than the full $40 dues, which might account in part for the drop in dues revenue.
On the other hand, expenses were significantly lower than the prior year, since we paid for only 8 rather than 12 meetings (3 meetings at the Cosmos Club were cancelled due to COVID, and the Cosmos Club charges for the Bradley lecture in November were covered by AGU due to them having backed out of their original commitment to host the meeting). As a result, the amounts I had to transfer from our invested funds (the Endowment Fund and Bradley Fund) in order to balance the General Fund were far less than in the prior year.
To see underlying trends in expenses as compared to revenue, please turn to the chart labeled Inflows vs. Outflows. On this chart I have normalised expenses for each fiscal year to what they would have been had we had 12 meetings at the Cosmos Club each year. On this basis our expenses in 2019/20 were slightly less than in the prior year - while speaker dinners were more expensive on average, and MSA fees (for our backoffice operations) also increased, our average drinks tab at the meetings we did have at the Cosmos Club decreased. But you will note on this chart that our revenues decreased somewhat more than our expenses, so our operating deficit (on a 12 meetings per year basis) is still increasing slightly (albeit not at the rapid clip shown in the previous years).
Now please turn to the Balance Sheet. Because the stock markets remained buoyant overall despite the COVID crisis, our investments in the Endowment and Bradley Funds still grew healthily last year. Coupled with the smaller General Fund deficit, this means that our net assets grew by a bit more than 11K, or by about 6%, during the year - not bad at all for a crisis year.
To understand the overall health of our finances, please see the last chart, titled "Coverage". The blue line shows our cash deficit (i.e., excess of total expenses over cash revenues) - note that, until 2015/16, this line was below zero, that is, we were taking in more cash than spending. You will note that, while the deficit had grown rapidly over last several years, the growth leveled off in the most recent year. The green line represents 4% of year-end balances in our Endowment and Bradley Funds - what our investment policy considers to be a prudent withdrawal from those funds to cover the cash deficits. This line has also been rising, due to the stockmarket-fueled increase in our investments. You will note that our cash deficit still remains below this 4% line and, at least on the trend from last year, may remain below that line for some years to come. Finally, the red line shows the actual market gains in our investments each year - which, for 6 out of the last 8 years, have been well above 4% annually.
Thus, at least for the time being, we are still in good shape - unless the cash deficict suddenly jumps again (due to further losses in revenue) or the stock markets turn decisively against us, we can still cover our operating gap from our invested funds for the next several years.
As for fiscal year 2020/21, it appears that actual expenses will once again be far below normal, as almost certainly all fall meetings, and with high likelihood most if not all spring meetings, will have to be held virtually. On the other hand, we will not know until late November (several weeks after the dues notices have gone out) how the crisis will affect membership dues and contributions - there is the potential that we might see another sharp decline in revenues as well. It is also not clear how various uncertainties this fall will affect the stock markets (though our investments have a significant bond component as well that should cushion high volatility in the stock markets). Nevertheless, I am hopeful that this current year will be another year of low operating deficit that will allow us to continue preserving and perhaps even increasing our invested funds for the future.
Action Item:
The Board needs to set dues levels for 2021. I recommend that dues be kept at the same level as for 2020.
Carl-Henry,
Thank you for a very clear and insightful report.
Larry
Larry Meinert
128 F St. SE
Washington DC 20003
413-320-5669
LDmeinert@gmail.com
On Sep 29, 2020, at 10:31 AM, Carl-Henry Geschwind geschwind@fastmail.com wrote:
In preparation for the Fall GSW Council Meeting, please find below my Treasurer's Report for the fiscal year that ended 30 June 2020. I am attaching 4 PDFs. Please also see the Action Item at the bottom of this message.
Please turn first to the Income Statement, on which I list inflows and outflows for both the most recent fiscal year (2019/20) and the previous year.
We are still hemorrhaging revenue - membership dues were down 8.5% compared to the prior year, although contributions were slightly up. I do not have a quantitative analysis for this, but just eyeballing the figures I believe we have a significantly larger proportion of the membership this year paying the reduced early-career $15 dues rather than the full $40 dues, which might account in part for the drop in dues revenue.
On the other hand, expenses were significantly lower than the prior year, since we paid for only 8 rather than 12 meetings (3 meetings at the Cosmos Club were cancelled due to COVID, and the Cosmos Club charges for the Bradley lecture in November were covered by AGU due to them having backed out of their original commitment to host the meeting). As a result, the amounts I had to transfer from our invested funds (the Endowment Fund and Bradley Fund) in order to balance the General Fund were far less than in the prior year.
To see underlying trends in expenses as compared to revenue, please turn to the chart labeled Inflows vs. Outflows. On this chart I have normalised expenses for each fiscal year to what they would have been had we had 12 meetings at the Cosmos Club each year. On this basis our expenses in 2019/20 were slightly less than in the prior year - while speaker dinners were more expensive on average, and MSA fees (for our backoffice operations) also increased, our average drinks tab at the meetings we did have at the Cosmos Club decreased. But you will note on this chart that our revenues decreased somewhat more than our expenses, so our operating deficit (on a 12 meetings per year basis) is still increasing slightly (albeit not at the rapid clip shown in the previous years).
Now please turn to the Balance Sheet. Because the stock markets remained buoyant overall despite the COVID crisis, our investments in the Endowment and Bradley Funds still grew healthily last year. Coupled with the smaller General Fund deficit, this means that our net assets grew by a bit more than 11K, or by about 6%, during the year - not bad at all for a crisis year.
To understand the overall health of our finances, please see the last chart, titled "Coverage". The blue line shows our cash deficit (i.e., excess of total expenses over cash revenues) - note that, until 2015/16, this line was below zero, that is, we were taking in more cash than spending. You will note that, while the deficit had grown rapidly over last several years, the growth leveled off in the most recent year. The green line represents 4% of year-end balances in our Endowment and Bradley Funds - what our investment policy considers to be a prudent withdrawal from those funds to cover the cash deficits. This line has also been rising, due to the stockmarket-fueled increase in our investments. You will note that our cash deficit still remains below this 4% line and, at least on the trend from last year, may remain below that line for some years to come. Finally, the red line shows the actual market gains in our investments each year - which, for 6 out of the last 8 years, have been well above 4% annually.
Thus, at least for the time being, we are still in good shape - unless the cash deficict suddenly jumps again (due to further losses in revenue) or the stock markets turn decisively against us, we can still cover our operating gap from our invested funds for the next several years.
As for fiscal year 2020/21, it appears that actual expenses will once again be far below normal, as almost certainly all fall meetings, and with high likelihood most if not all spring meetings, will have to be held virtually. On the other hand, we will not know until late November (several weeks after the dues notices have gone out) how the crisis will affect membership dues and contributions - there is the potential that we might see another sharp decline in revenues as well. It is also not clear how various uncertainties this fall will affect the stock markets (though our investments have a significant bond component as well that should cushion high volatility in the stock markets). Nevertheless, I am hopeful that this current year will be another year of low operating deficit that will allow us to continue preserving and perhaps even increasing our invested funds for the future.
Action Item:
The Board needs to set dues levels for 2021. I recommend that dues be kept at the same level as for 2020.
<2020 Income Statement.pdf><Inflows vs Outflows 2020.pdf><2020 Balance Sheet.pdf><Coverage 2020.pdf>_______________________________________________
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