As we began a new Fiscal year on October 1, our Treasurer, Matt Watts, and our Finance Officer, Peter Smith, thought we would bring the membership up to date regarding our financial status.
The Academy was founded in May of 2008 with a $5,000 grant from Pacific Crest in return for free registrations to the annual conference. We incorporated in the State of New York as a Charitable organization and obtained 501c(3) nonprofit status from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the spring of 2009. We have filed forms with the IRS each spring since then. Almost all of our income has come through membership fees (both individual and institutional) and conference registration fees, although we welcome donations. The following chart outlines the financial trends of the Academy over the last 9 years.
Prior to 2019, the academy used a fiscal year that began on June 1. Since 2019 we switched to a fiscal year that begins on October 1. Looking over the Receipts column in the table above, it is easy to differentiate the years when the annual conference was in person from the years it was online. The conference was online during the pandemic years and our expenses exceeded the receipts in each of those years, whereas the opposite was true for the years preceding the pandemic when we met in person. The last two years did not follow this pattern. We lost money in the year we met in person and gained money last year when we met online. Although the conference receipts exceeded expenses by about $600 in the 2022 conference, we began paying our webmaster a stipend that year as an independent contractor for her work with the newsletter, conference webpages, and production of the International Journal of Process Education, which we provide free of charge electronically.
The bottom line is that the Academy has been able to maintain a balance above $25,000 for the last 7 years. The treasurer publishes reports detailing the Academy’s finances quarterly in the member site. Additionally, the finance officer works with an ad-hoc committee to perform an internal audit of the Academy’s finances annually, which is shared at the Winter Meeting. With a current membership about 150 individuals and 4 institutions, as well as plans for an in-person conference in 2024, we believe that the Academy is financially viable. For further information, please contact Matt Watts (mkhwatts@gmail.com) and/or Peter Smith (psmith1036@gmail.com).
