At the EC meeting in February and then again in May, finances were a pressing item on the agenda. The February meeting has typically been the meeting where the SIG budget, also called the organizational budget or “org budget”, is deliberated, and for the most part, finalized. In February we discuss what we know about projections around the SIG’s income and expenses, including the projections around the upcoming SIGGRAPH conference provided by the Conference Advisory Group (CAG). By the time May rolls around, the CAG starts to adjust projections around the conference income and expenses based on early activity. These insights make the May EC meeting a good time to deliberate on the costs of our portfolio of year-round activities and standing committees of the organization.
Our organizational income comes from three sources: the conferences, membership dues, and digital library revenue, in pretty much the same ratio as it did back in 2021. The majority of the revenue from conferences comes from our two flagship conferences, SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia. Specialized conferences do not generate a significant surplus in typical years, and when they do, we allow them to use half of that surplus amount toward the next year’s conference. For the SIGGRAPH conference, the conference chair, in consultation with the CAG, puts together a budget which projects income and expenses. When the conference closes, any surplus gets deposited in the organizational reserves. In a low year, we have the ability to draw on the reserves to make up any losses. SIGGRAPH Asia is a different financial model. At this moment, KoelnMesse, an international event organizer, assumes the financial risks associated with that conference and our organization receives a minimum fee along with a small percentage of the profit, if any. The SACAG, though analogous to the CAG in terms of its mandate to maintain year to year continuity in terms of the conference experience, does not have the same level of visibility or authority over SIGGRAPH Asia finances, decisions around locations, choice of contractors, etc. As a result, the really big source of revenue for the organization is the SIGGRAPH conference.
So, what has been top of mind for the EC this May? That while we hope for the best, it will be prudent to plan for the worst.
The amount of digital library revenue we can expect in the coming financial year has a question mark next to our (and ACM’s) best projections because it remains to be seen how authors and institutions respond to the move to ACM OPEN. Membership has been declining over the past thirty or so years (see Figure 1) in each category (affiliate members are those who are members of the SIG but not ACM members). Membership revenue is thus unlikely to make up for deficits in other sources of revenue. If the conferences do not return a surplus, or worse, if they run into losses due to the factors that are outside of our control, we will deplete our reserves quite quickly (see Figure 2). The EC that navigated SIGGRAPH through previous financial crises prescribed a reserve amount over and above the ACM mandated reserve. If this reserve gets hit, then the fiscally responsible thing to do by the conference (by which I mean the SIGGRAPH conference) and the standing committees of the organization (including the EC) is to take drastic steps whether that involves reducing expenses or generating revenue or both.
The EC considered this sobering situation in the May meeting. The EC talked about contingency planning. Some of the ideas that emerged in that discussion: reviewing our approach to large contracts as those are multi-year agreements that are a big part of conference costs, reviewing our approach to contributor and volunteer recognition and associated expenses, considering new conferences (SIGGRAPH Europe?), exploring ways to grow specialized conferences and examining the tradeoffs involved in static versus moving conference locations. Readers, this is your SIG– I invite you to send the EC your thoughts and ideas via this Google form.
