2022Q1 Reports: Treasurer

ACL's financial health continues to be very strong, with sufficient capital reserves after having successfully weathered one of the most challenging and risk filled fiscal environments in our history, given cautious financial planning and risk mitigation for very negative potential scenarios which thankfully did not come to pass.

ACL's combined financial reserves are $5,960,000 (USD) as of 5/2022. This total includes the central ACL organization, and all of ACL's many chapters and SIGs including the EMNLP conferences, and it represents 43% year-to-year growth in financial reserves since 6/30/2021, given both cautious financial planning and risk mitigation strategies, and the exceptional success of our 2020 and 2021 conferences.

These financial reserves continue to remain quite important; COVID remains a very unpredictable force in conference planning, given our large 2+ years in advance financial commitments and future registration numbers which are extremely difficult to estimate

ACL /NAACL/EMNLP continue to have large legacy (pre-COVID) financial commitments to multiple future meetings (e.g. we look forward to seeing you in person at NAACLs 2022/24 in Seattle and Mexico City!)

However, our increasing financial buffers provide opportunities for new investments, and sustainable equitable reductions in registration fees.

ACL's membership revenue continues to be critically important to funding its journals and anthology and other core services. On average between 2018-2021, ACL's core services were supported by:

Core Services Income:

• 97% Membership fees
• ~0% Royalties/Licensing Fees
• 3% Other earned revenue
• 0% Journal subscriptions and open access charges

Core Services Expenditures:

• 36% ACL Office, Legal/Accounting, IT Infrastructure (Anthology)
• 64%+ TACL and CL Journals and other initiatives

As we stand today, ACL's membership fees barely cover its core services, which include not only our journals but also ACL's very leanly run office, legal and accounting costs, and our IT infrastructure (which includes the ACL Anthology). And as our journals continue to grow significantly in size and scope, and our rolling review infrastructure have technology support needs, ACL's costs continue to grow steadily as well.

Even in a fully virtual-conference world these crown jewels depend on fully paid membership fees at a roughly 5000 person level, which may not be sustainable in some potential financial futures.

The central reason that ACL does depend so much on our membership fees is because we have *no* journal subscription or open access charges. Now we of course could change that financial model and make the journal authors and users pay for our journals all by themselves, but there appears to be strong consensus that its a good thing that our complete half century of scholarship is freely available to everyone rather than stuck behind a paywall like at some of our peer institutions.

ACL continues to face a very difficult to predict financial future, and hybrid conferences have costs substantially in excess of an all in person or all virtual conference of the same total size. As we work to adapt our conference structures to meet the wishes of our membership, we will seek to use our financial reserves to improve fairness, access and equity for those members who choose to participate in our conferences both in person and virtually.