Where do my STC dues go?
STC members have a right to know how their dues are spent, and the STC Board of Directors has committed itself to a policy of financial transparency. This article is meant to provide basic information to STC members about Society finances. All figures are presented as percentages; actual numbers will be presented in the upcoming Annual Report.
Expenses and Revenues
Every dollar spent by STC either funds member services or funds the support systems necessary for those member services to exist. For the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2007, Figure 1 shows how those dollars were divided.
Figure 1. STC Expense Allocation for FY 06/07
Professional Development includes such things as STC's technical communication competitons, research, and scholarships.
Membership includes all costs associated with processing membership, such as the cost of printing dues renewal notices and credit card fees.
Figure 1 may be confusing, because programs like the STC Annual Conference are intended to be self-sustaining. That is, they're meant to bring in more money than the Society spends on them. This was the case for the STC Annual Conference for 2007--it brought in more money than was spent on it. So why does 21% of every STC dollar go to fund it?
The reason is that all STC revenue--including membership dues, conference registration, and publication advertising--is placed in the same account. Every dollar spent by STC was collected from several different sources. Figure 2 shows STC's revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007.
Figure 2. STC Revenue Sources for FY 06/07
How do we compare to other, similar organizations?
Comparing STC's finances to a for-profit business would be confusing, because STC is a nonproft organization. Fortunately, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) publishes operating ratio reports (ORRs) for associations. These help STC benchmark itself against other associations of like size and type.
STC’s expenses are in range compared to other associations with only one exception: occupancy. (Please refer to Figure 3.) STC is higher than average. This is because STC’s office space is larger than we need. The good news is that we have recently signed a lease with a subtenant (which still needs approval from the landlord). This will bring STC’s occupancy down to more acceptable levels. STC’s salary line item is actually lower than the average association of like budget; this is because STC has fewer staff members than a typical association of like size. STC is within a 2–5% range (high or low) on other key expense areas. In short, STC expenses are in line with other associations.
Figure 3. ASAE ORR vs. STC Expenses
STC revenues, however, show that STC is still too dues dependent compared to other associations. (Please refer to Figure 4.) STC receives 58.03% of its income from dues (compared to 37.70% with other associations). STC needs to earn more money from other sources and this will keep STC dues lower. Knowing that, the STC Board of Directors and the STC staff are investigating and have made it a priority to find ways to bring in non-dues revenue. To that end, over the last year, STC has markedly increased its level of income from advertising and sponsorships, but we have a long way to go before we can shift the percentages to be more in line with the ASAE averages.
Figure 4. ASAE ORR vs. STC Revenue
The STC office and Board are working diligently to reduce expenses wherever possible without sacrificing services and to reduce the Society’s dependency on dues income. The means for reducing that dependency is to increase the non-dues income generated by the Society. But in the meantime, the Board must set the dues structure in such a way so that total revenue covers the cost of the services and benefits STC provides.
