Eighty-eighth Annual Report of The American Phytopathological Society.

The Financial Advisory Committee and APS headquarters’ staff members met on 29 March and 3 and 4 June in St. Paul, MN, and on 26 July 1996 in Indianapolis, IN, to review past and current financial matters related to the operation of the Society and to prepare the budget for FY97. The approved minutes of these meetings were distributed to your regional councilor and are on file at headquarters in St. Paul. Due to limited space, I will summarize only four of the numerous agenda items addressed and recommendations that were made at each of these three meetings. 1) A review of the advantages and disadvantages of current budgeting procedures resulted in a simplified accounting report designed to provide our committee members the information required to conduct an annual cost/benefit analysis of APS member services. 2) The financial success of the Pittsburgh annual meeting and the proposed budget for the Indianapolis meeting resulted in the recommendation that Council increase support of the scientific sessions of our annual meetings from the current level of $9,000 to $15,000 beginning with the 1997 meeting. 3) The Financial Advisory Committee also recommended that Council provide financial funds toward student travel expense to our annual meetings and that Council increase APS Foundation support from the current level of $2,500 to $5,000 for annual headquarters’ staff support. 4) The committee reviewed the goal for the operating reserve, our current investments, and potential uses for interest generated by the reserve funds. There was agreement among committee members to transfer $300,000 from our investments to the operating reserve funds. Future interest generated from this reserve will be equally divided between the operating reserve and the annual operating budget. It also was agreed that future annual budgets will no longer contain a line item for increasing our operating reserve funds. I am pleased to report that our Society completed FY96 with an unaudited, balanced budget after allocating $246,752 to our reserves, capital improvement expenses, and cash assets. Our total income ($3,198,990) was derived from eleven sources (Fig. 1) and our total operating expenses ($2,952,238) incurred during FY96 are partitioned into seven categories (Fig. 2). After allocating $126,770 for maintenance reserves, operating reserves, and capital improvement expenses, our operating surplus totaled $119,982 compared with our FY96 budget that was approved with a net loss of $8,534. The favorable surplus resulted primarily from reducing total operating expenses by $180,252 below that budgeted in June 1995. The total assets as of 30 June 1996, excluding restricted funds, were $3,137,080, and current liabilities totaled $1,955,435, producing a membership equity of $1,181,645. The audited financial statement for FY96 appears in this issue of Phytopathology.