Jamye Sagan, IDL CoP Treasurer

We end 2020 on a healthy financial note – we were able to fund all of our activities, plus have some extra. As of December 26, we have a total of $656.66 in our account – $419.43 in our vested funds, and $237.23 in community funding. Vested funds can roll over each year, but any remaining community funding will be absorbed back into STC. Unlike chapters, communities of practice do not have standalone accounts. Instead, they have sub-accounts under the STC umbrella. Because we did not meet in person at Summit this year, we did not incur as many expenses such as door prizes and business lunch catering.

From September to December, we incurred the following expenses:

• Conference swag, especially mailable items
• Webinar stipends
• Door prizes for Virtual Open House and Demographic Survey
• Stipend for CoP logo redesign

As for income, we made a modest amount from our webinar net proceeds – about $15-25. These proceeds come from IDL non-members; members and students attend at no charge.

In conclusion, we are happy to announce that our 2021 budget has been approved! We take great care to ensure that our funds will benefit as many of our members as possible. Thank you for supporting us, whether by attending our webinars, reading/contributing to our newsletter, or perusing our website.

If you have any questions about SIG finances, please email me at treasurer@stcidlsig.org.

COMING SOON: 2020 IDL SIG Member Demographic Survey

Sometime in late September or early October, we will release our IDL SIG member demographic survey. This survey, which we conduct every two years, enables us to capture the pulse of our membership. Results from this survey help guide us in developing programs and services that would best benefit our members. Plus, as a token of our appreciation for taking the time to complete the survey, we will once again offer the opportunity for you to be entered into a raffle drawing. Your survey results will still remain anonymous, even if you enter the drawing.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to review results from past surveys, please visit http://www.stcidlsig.org/discussion-lists/surveys/. Doing so will also give you an idea of the types of questions we ask.

COMING SOON: Virtual Open House

We will host our eighth annual Virtual Open House on Thursday September 24 at 7pm ET.

This event enables current (and future) IDL SIG members to learn more about our community and the services we offer. Plus, attendees get to meet members of the SIG leadership team and chat with fellow members. Even if you cannot attend live, you can still join the party once we release the recording.

We will announce Virtual Open House registration details as they become available.

IDL SIG Treasurer Report – 2020 Q3

As of August 31, 2020, we have $1,193.62 in our account— $789.19 from community funding and $404.43 in our vested funds.

Since we did not meet in person for the 2020 STC Summit in Bellevue, WA, we did not spend any budgeted funds, including Community Reception giveaways and catered lunch for our annual in-person business meeting. Since Summit, we have incurred the following expenses:

• One STC Student membership for our student article writing competition
• Survey Monkey subscription renewal.
  • We use Survey Monkey for our demographic survey, educational webinar evaluations, and elections.
• Zoom professional subscription
  • In the past, we had used Go To Meeting to host our educational webinars and monthly manager meetings. We decided to switch to Zoom this year to save costs; as a result, we saved about $190 per year.

For the rest of the year, our primary expense will be speaker honoraria once we resume our educational webinars. Since we will have extra funds as a result of not attending Summit in person, we are currently discussing how to spend our remaining community funding most efficiently, since those funds will expire at the end of the calendar year.

Where do we get our funds?

Our primary source of income comes from community funding and vested funds. Community funding are funds we receive from the STC office, based on SIG membership numbers. We receive a certain dollar amount per member. Since these funds do not carry over from year to year, we must use them or forfeit them.

Vested funds are funds we have earned through the years. These funds can carry over year after year. Over the years, we had earned a significant amount of our income from SIG-sponsored educational webinars. Since we don’t generate as much vested funds now as we had in the past, the amount of vested funds continues to dwindle. Therefore, we depend more and more on community funding for our expenses.

In any case, we constantly review our budget to see where we can save costs and, most importantly, how we can use our funds to best benefit you — our members.

We’d like to hear from you!

If you have any questions about SIG finances, please email me at treasurer@stcidlsig.org.

By Jamye Sagan, IDL SIG Treasurer

The SIG continues to perform well financially in 2019. Although we have already spent all our community funding, we have plenty of money in our vested funds. As of August 1, we have $1,751.34 in our account.

What Did We Spend?

The SIGʼs major expenses in May, June and July included:

• Reimbursement for door prizes at our annual SIG business meeting at Summit.
• Annual Survey Monkey membership.
  • We use Survey Monkey for our bi-annual demographic survey, webinar evaluation forms, election ballots, and occasional mini-surveys.
• Stipend for our SIG Manager to attend Summit.
• Annual subscription for AP Style Manual, an editorial resource for our newsletter.

These, and other expenses incurred throughout the year, help us provide valuable services to all our IDL SIG members.

Where Do We Get Our SIG Funding?

Since we offer free webinars for IDL SIG members and current students, we do not depend on webinars as a primary source of income. Currently, our primary source of income comes from community funds and vested funds.

Community Funds vs Vested Funds

Every year, we receive community funds from the STC office, based on SIG membership numbers. We receive a certain amount per member, so the more members we have, the more funds we have. Since community funds do NOT carry over from year to year, we must “use them or lose them.”

Over the years, we have earned vested funds. Before we started offering our webinars at no charge to our members, we depended on webinars as our primary source of income. Over the years, we had earned a significant amount of income from our webinars. Unlike community funds, vested funds can carry over year after year.

We spend first from our Community funding, since it does NOT carry over to the next year. Once community funding depletes, we then spend from our vested funds. All our income is deposited into our vested funding, which DOES carry over year after year. Besides community funding, how do we earn income? Although we offer webinars at no charge to IDL SIG members and students, we still earn some funds from non-SIG and non-STC member webinar registrations.

If you have any questions about SIG finances, please email me at treasurer@stcidlsig.org.

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Jamye Sagan currently serves as treasurer for the IDL SIG, and is a senior member of STC. She served as a co-manager of the SIG from 2010-12.

At work, she uses her tech comm skills to make sense out of the seemingly senseless. At play, she uses sticks and hooks to transform yarn into pretty objects.