Page 54 - 2018Fall

Sound Perspectives
David Feit
Postal:
Acoustical Society of America 1305 Walt Whitman Road Suite 300 Melville, New York 11747 USA
Email:
dfeit@aip.org
A REPORT FROM THE TREASURER
Acoustical Society Finances
After serving since 2001 as treasurer of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and reporting semiannually to the Executive Council, I am pleased to be able to re- port directly to the general membership and the interested public on the financial activities of the Society. Although in the last few years our operating activities have shown a deficit, it is a pleasure to report that the Society is in excellent financial health, with sufficient resources available to deliver maximum value to the mem- bership now and in the foreseeable future.
This article was written before the issuance of the independent auditor’s report for the year 2016 and therefore reflects our current best estimates of the financial activities of the ASA for 2016. The auditor’s report was issued in June of this year and will be published in a condensed version in The Journal of the Acoustical Society (JASA) in the fall.1
Although op-
erating deficits
are not ideal, the
ASA is fortunate
in that operat-
ing deficits can
be overcome or
eliminated by
drawing a rea-
sonably small
amount (maxi-
mum of 4%) of
our total assets
that are currently
more than $18
million, as seen
in Figure 1. The
total assets in-
clude long-term investments managed by our two investment management firms, Lowell-Blake Associates and Fragasso Financial Advisors, and short-term invest- ments held within our working capital account at Charles Schwab & Co. The over- all assets of the ASA in 2016 grew by almost $600,000, and reserves in the last decade grew at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6%. The growth in our assets can be attributed to investment gains as well as contributions and bequests from ASA members.
Currently, a portion of these assets (about $7.5 million) are restricted and held in the Acoustical Society Foundation Fund2 and therefore cannot be used to fund op- erating activities other than those directly associated with the Fund activities. That leaves about $11 million to support whatever operating deficits have arisen in 2016.
1 The full report will be available at the ASA Office, 1305 Walt Whitman Rd., Suite 300, Melville, NY 11747
Figure 1. Total assets of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).
52 | Acoustics Today | Fall 2017 | volume 13, issue 3 ©2017 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.