by Gary Christoph
Based upon a recent audit, CUG remains in good financial health. We have money in the bank, but in the last two years we have experienced some significant losses that are making us think more deeply about how CUG funds its operations and supports the CUG conferences. CUG assets are currently about $47,000 below what they were two years ago, totaling $126,612.83 on September 30, 1996.For the fiscal years 94-95 and 95-96, CUG experienced net operating losses of about $24,000 each year. To cover these losses, we have significantly depleted our reserves below what our auditors recommend.
Recent shortfalls
The biggest single difficulty in running a CUG conference is predicting what attendance will be. Attendance at the Alaska CUG in Fairbanks, while a spectacular CUG (with incredible aurora borealis displays arranged especially for the "Night Out") was below what was estimated, and needed, to break even--the goal of all CUG conferences.CUG and the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, our host for the Fairbanks conference, agreed to jointly absorb the overrun. The board hopes that improved coordination and communication between the board and the host local arrangements committees will help to avoid such losses.
Another factor leading to our recent shortfalls, dating from when CUG had several conferences in a row that made significant profits (which the host sites graciously donated to CUG), we began some new initiatives whose costs and impacts are now fully felt without compensating income. In particular:
While these projects have or will yield future savings, these initiatives, plus inflation and increased operational costs, have still negatively affected our bottom line.
- We embarked on having a central CUG Office.
- We began a program budget for each conference.
- We have implemented a modern integrated database for our membership income and conference attendance records.
We have been indeed fortunate in that the Denver and Barcelona CUG meetings both provided significant positive contributions of revenues, totaling over $42,000, to the parent CUG organization. Miguel Huguet (CESCA) and Gary Jensen (Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center) deserve our special gratitude for these contributions.
The fiscal future
At Charlotte, the CUG board passed a CUG membership dues increase. This action was taken because the board dipped into reserves in order to provide additional support for two recent conferences that had greater than expected expenses.Beginning January 1, 1998, the annual membership fee will increase from $300 USD to $500 USD per year. At the same time, the membership year will change to coincide with the calendar year, with the current membership year being extended the few extra months at no charge.
The board also acted to eliminate, effective immediately, the trial program to allow new sites their first year's membership free. This program attracted only a few new members (several percent per year), and given the current financial pressures had to be discontinued. The board is exploring savings that might result from publishing our proceedings and newsletter electronically.
Moving to one major CUG conference a year will not likely yield significant savings, because the board anticipates replacing the Fall traditional meeting with several smaller topical or regional meetings that will likely require comparable expenditures. (CUG currently expends about $20,000 for costs related to each CUG conference. These are costs that are not recovered from registration proceeds. It costs about $50,000 per year to pay for the CUG business and publishing operations.)
The board would appreciate your ideas or comments on the impact of such decisions on how you value CUG, and on any ideas that might increase membership and conference attendance. Our goal, as always, is to provide conference environments congenial to ready information exchange, whether in technical sessions or in one-on-one exchanges, with our counterparts and colleagues, and with SGI-Cray executives and staff.
Our goal is
to provide conference
environments congenial
to ready information
exchange.
