2021Q1 Reports: Treasurer
In calendar year 2020, ACL's working assets increased from USD 2,838,654 to 3,389,196 a gain of 19%. This reflects the relative success experienced by ACL and its 2020 conferences in dealing with the transition to all virtual meetings in CY 2020. This USD 550,542 increase was neither expected nor intended; ACL set registration fees for its 2020 all-virtual conferences with the intention of a combined break-even financial outcome with only a small contingency buffer. However, the surplus was due to the much higher than expected attendance at its conference (an all-time record of 4,973 at ACL 2020 and 4,069 at EMNLP 2020), and associated growth in ACL's membership and membership revenue. Prior to 2020, ACL had longstanding attendance data records and planning experience whereby physical conference attendance was generally able to be predicted within modest bounds given growth extrapolation. However, ACL (and the academic conference planning field in general) had no prior data on what to expect regarding virtual attendance during the COVID-19 emergency, given multiple factors including the substantially lower registration fees vs. reductions in institutional conference attendance budgets and potential sharing of virtual conference access credentials between individuals. Another source of uncertainty was the stability of ACL's industrial sponsorship, which fortunately remained strong even during the challenging economic climate and virtual changes.
Calendar year 2021 presents new risks. At least 3 of *ACL's conferences will be 100% virtual in 2021, and while our 2020 conferences provide important benchmark data, robust predictions remain difficult during this period of continued uncertainty. *ACL is working to keep costs low in balance with improvements in experience quality, and we strive to keep registration fees as low as possible, especially for students, and to provide additional funding to support access by less affluent communities.
Going forward, predictions of attendance and costs in expected future hybrid conferences remains particularly challenging and of greater consequence, given the need for commitments (both financial and contractual) several years in advance that can result in either inadequate space if physical attendance exceeds expectations, and the associated potential to need to cut-off physical attendance registrations, in contrast with the increased financial risks of potentially lower-than-expected physical attendance given higher fixed costs and contractual commitments to variable costs and numbers before even early registration closes. This continued substantial uncertainty in ACL's next hybrid phase requires increased contingency planning, mitigated in part by ACL's prior reserves.
ACL's financial reserves are also critically important for supporting and backstopping its multiple new initiatives, including those requiring new information technology and data hosting resources, new journal support, and especially including those providing financial support for increasing diversity and improved access of under-represented and under-resourced communities to ACL conferences, and to help make any such policy and expectation changes sustainable in the long run.
ACL has made substantial progress in 2020 in modernizing its accounting systems and practices, and will be investing a very large effort in 2021 to make adjustments to its business and financial organizational structures consistent with the ACL institution's greatly increased scope and complexity over the past several decades, and the need to facilitate its sustainable and effective continuation of such management into the continually challenging future.