Where Does the Money Come From?
Kevin R. Murphy
Pennsylvania State University
At a recent meeting of the SIOP Executive Committee, we reviewed the SIOP budget in some detail. Each year, SIOP provides a wide range of services to its members (e.g., the annual conference, workshops,
TIP, the SIOP Web site, JobNet, Consultant Locator, SIOP publications, and discounts on publications from a range of publishers), and if you ask most SIOP members where the money comes from, the most common answer is our dues. Similarly, if you ask APA members where all the money comes from to fund the various activities of APA, dues is usually pretty high on the list.
Member dues are an extremely important source of income for both SIOP and APA; without your dues, neither organization would be able to offer such a range of services to their members. On the other hand, much of the income that supports SIOP, APA, and other similar organizations comes from other sources, and we thought it might be useful to SIOP members to get a better picture of where the money comes from.
Table 1 provides a breakdown of the main sources of income for SIOP and APA. First, it shows that dues are an important source of income for both SIOP and APA. Second, it shows that both groups are engaged in other activities that bring in the bulk of their income.
Table 1
Percentage of Income Derived From Different Sources____________________________________________________________________
Source
SIOP
APA
____________________________________________________________________
| Dues |
21.2% |
13.0% |
| Conference fees |
48.5% |
2.8% |
| Conference sponsorships |
10.9% |
|
| Publications, royalties, advertising |
10.0% |
47.4% |
| JobNet |
7.9% |
|
| Other |
1.5% |
36.8% |
Table 1 shows just how important the annual conference is to SIOP as a source of income. On the other hand, the conference is also our largest single expense. Most years, we break about even or make a small profit on the conference, but last year (largely because of the large number of hotel sleeping room cancellations), SIOP lost a good chunk of money on the annual conference. We still regard it as a pretty good investment. In addition to dues, SIOPs main sources of nonconference income come from publications and from activities like JobNet. Your dues are hard at work, but they receive lots of help from other sources.
The story is similar in many ways for APA. APA makes nearly half its total income from its publication program. The books, journals, royalties, and advertising associated with APA represent a genuine success story, combining high standards of quality with a pretty solid balance sheet. The APA conference is much larger than the SIOP conference, but in the grand scheme of things, it is not in the same league as the SIOP conference in terms of the contribution it makes to the viability and the success of the organization.
The bottom line is that your dues are critically important to SIOP and APA, but both organizations also draw very significant support from the members who choose to attend their conferences (the SIOP conference usually reports a much higher proportion of its members in attendance than most similar organizations), and from those who buy their books, magazines, and journals. The bottom line is that when you buy a book through the SIOP office you save money, and you help support SIOP. When you attend the SIOP conference, you are also supporting SIOP. So, dont forget to pay your dues, and while you are at it, buy a book, and register for the conference!
January 2003 Table
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