On SIGCHI Finances
At the SIGCHI Town Hall during CHI 2024, the Executive Committee (EC) was asked for some clarifications regarding the SIG’s finances. We love to see a financially aware SIG, especially with ACM OPEN on the horizon, and lay out the details below. With this post, we aim to offer a comprehensive, big-picture view of SIGCHI’s finances and an understanding of the decisions made to spend and to invest.
We present an overview of incomes and expenses, before elaborating on all categories of expenses, particularly attending to the EC’s spending. We close with a list of Q&A. The numbers and analyses we provide are from the last two fiscal years, 2023 and 2024 (yet to close), since 2022’s numbers were anomalous on account of the pandemic.
This is the first write-up of its kind for the SIG, to the best of our knowledge, which means that we had no prior write-ups to take inspiration from or to contrast against, and will gladly factor in feedback, also for the benefit of future ECs. Please note that some numbers presented below are approximations, and others may change as accounts are closed for the current fiscal year.
SIGCHI’s Incomes and Expenses (FY23+FY24)
SIGCHI has four main income streams and four categories of expenses. The former include:
(1) ACM Digital Library downloads — USD 1.03M of revenue in FY23, and we are projected to bring in roughly the same in FY24,
(2) the CHI conference — USD 1.8M for CHI 2022 in FY23 and USD 3.4M for CHI 2023 in FY24 (these should cover the expenses reported below),
(3) our 25 specialized conferences — USD 2.2M in FY23, and projected to USD 3.5M in FY24 (also these should cover the expenses below), and
(4) SIG membership dues — USD 108K in FY23 and USD 113K (expected) in FY24.
There are four categories of annual expenses for SIGCHI, to be covered by the incomes above:
(1) the CHI conference — USD 2.1M for CHI 2022 in FY23 and USD 3.5M for CHI 2023 in FY24,
(2) our 25 specialized conferences — USD 1.8M in FY23 and USD 3M in FY24 (expected),
(3) EC spending on various EC-driven initiatives — USD 2.2M in FY23 and USD 1.8M in FY24 (expected), and
(4) ACM overhead or percentage of the SIG’s spending returned to ACM — USD 593K in FY23 and USD 771K in FY24 (expected).
Please note the following:
(1) The above figures are taken from our official budgets.
(2) FY 2023 (FY23) goes from July 1 2022 to June 30 2023.
(3) FY 2024 (FY24) goes from July 1 2023 to June 30 2024.
(4) CHI XX accounts show up in FY XX+1.
(5) The symbol $ will be used for USD below.
(6) Year names are shortened below, e.g. CHI 2022 is written as CHI22.
We discuss the above categories of expenses in depth below. For additional transparency, we link SIGCHI budget spreadsheets from FY20 to FY25, with breakdowns for the budgeted, projected, and actual spending at the time of preparation and submission of the budget (typically, this is around March, prior to the start of the fiscal year). Note that these spreadsheets are non-trivial to understand and may take hours and some guidance to navigate (see ACM’s primer). Hence this post.
1. CHI
The CHI conference is a source of pride and joy to the SIG. It is also a significant volunteering and financial commitment. Because this is our flagship, the EC has had a practice of holding various meetings, receptions, and town halls here, to engage with the SIGCHI community. The finances are not easily separable, and neither are the goals. Still, we try. In this section we present conference finances, and in Section 3, we discuss the EC’s expenses at CHI.
The CHI Steering Committee (CHI SC) has most comprehensively laid out the details of CHI finances, explaining how and why the conference (and SIG) are making changes to the CHI conference format. The SC has also engaged the CHI community in conversations on these topics in recent months. We appreciate this commitment to community engagement, which takes significant time and effort, over and above the actual labor of making change.
CHI22 officially closed at a loss of approx. $485K. The number of attendees was low in comparison to prior CHIs due to the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and hybrid costs were high, as CHI SC Chair-Emeritus Regan Mandryk noted in her post: “For example, the hybrid conference platform was similar in price to a physical convention centre rental; the logistics support for the virtual conference was double that for the physical conference; the AV support for the hybrid conference more than double the cost of a physical-only conference.” CHI23 officially closed at a loss of approx. $132K, and as Regan Mandryk noted in her post, this was “even though it was the largest in-person CHI to date, it responsibly covered the 19% VAT (required every time CHI is held in Europe) through registration, and the chairs secured both corporate sponsorship and a national grant.”
Some CHI costs are covered via internal transfers agreed upon with the EC. There are additional expenses that the EC chooses to incur annually at CHI. We talk about these under the EC’s spending on CHI in 3(c) below.
2. Our Specialized Conferences
Our 25 specialized conferences (e.g., CSCW, IMX, IDC, SUI, ETRA, etc.) together budgeted up to approx. $3M (FY24, expected) — up from $1.8M (FY23). This amount is almost comparable to the cost of a single CHI conference. When one specialized conference or two suffer a loss, we can generally handle the loss. However, if there are trends impacting the closing of several of our conferences, or even different trends impacting different conferences all at the same time, such as the impact of hybrid offerings on the budget, making it harder for conferences to break even, then the losses add up and impact us.
ACM also charges each SIG an overhead (see Section 4 below) based on a formula, proportional to SIG expenses, and this amount was increased by the SIG Governing Board in 2022 for FY23 and beyond, resulting in SIGCHI becoming one of the largest overhead-contributing SIGs, and conferences in turn contributing more than before (now at 16% of expenses). You can view the conference closings in our EC term — for all specialized conferences — on the SIGCHI website. Note that conferences can take several months to close, which determines which fiscal year they are counted under. Please also see Q7 at the end of the post: “why have some conferences lost money?”
3. The EC’s Expenses
First of all, who/what is the EC? The SIGCHI Executive Committee (EC) (see org. chart below) consists of 23 members, who oversee 17 additional committees and working groups at present. There are also 7 ad hoc committees that are externally led but report to the SIGCHI President, including CARES, the CHI Steering Committee (CHI SC), the Research Ethics Committee, Futuring SIGCHI, and our three regional committees for Asia, Latin America, and the Mediterranean region (see all committees). The EC’s budget covers initiatives driven by each of these 24 committees and 274 volunteer roles, including wide-ranging expenses such as CARES training, CART or real-time captioning expenses for accessibility, awards honoraria, software and services such as Submittable, and much more.
The EC spending for this year (FY24) is expected to be approx. $1.82M, 23% of the total projected fund balance. In FY23, it was $2.16M and 38%. The drop in percentage, from 38% to 23%, is commensurate with the total fund allocation for conferences and ACM overhead, which has risen from 62% to 77%. EC expenses include these key items:
(a) Operations or what we spend on the tech infrastructure developed for our conferences,
(b) Community Support or what we provide to members, communities, conferences, and chapters,
(c) CHI or the funds directed by EC to CHI annually, and
(d) Travel lumped together for all EC committees, also including ad hoc committees such as the regional committees and the CHI SC.
(a) Operations
At present, our Operations budget is determined based on the funds committed for the tools we have been building for SIGCHI conferences, including QOALA for conference leaders and the Programs app for attendees, adding up to $503K in FY23 and $522K in FY24. This post from former VP Operations offers helpful background (since we carried forward the operations decisions made by the previous EC). In addition, CVENT and PCS that are used by our conferences are expected to account for $30K and $110K in FY24, respectively. In FY23, these costs were $29K (CVENT) and $81K (PCS). We also use various online services and project management tools for the EC and our committees/conferences (e.g., Submittable, Survey Monkey, Slite, Todoist), which added up to approx. $30K in each of FY23 and FY24. Please see Q1 below that asks if we should spend less on our operations infrastructure.
(b) Community Support
As with Ops, we revised our Community Support programs during the pandemic, while there were limited travels and few requests for grants given that everything was online. Our Community Support infrastructure now includes grants given out via the Gary Marsden Travel Awards, or GMTA, to SIGCHI members; it also includes grants given out via the SIGCHI Development Fund, or SDF, to (a) communities within SIGCHI, (b) SIGCHI-sponsored conferences, and (c) SIGCHI Chapters. The GMTA is managed by the GMTA Committee, while the SDF is managed by the SDF Committee.
We have been providing periodic reporting on the awardees being funded. The SIGCHI website lists both GMTA recipients (with conference names) and SDF recipients (with disbursed amounts). We are glad to see these programs become better known and subscribed. More details follow.
Gary Marsden Travel Awards
The Gary Marsden Travel Awards support SIGCHI members in physically or virtually attending CHI as well as our specialized conferences. There used to be separate travel grants for those from the Global North and the Global South. In an effort to remove this binary distinction, since financial hardship impacts members everywhere, we consolidated the travel awards programs. We have been prioritizing those with demonstrated financial need, and who would strongly benefit from and contribute to the conference community, such as first-time attendees and presenters. We also aim to ensure that awards are distributed across as many conferences as possible, while also accounting for the variable number of applicants for each conference.
For conferences taking place in FY23, we awarded $422K to 231 members, and for conferences held during FY24, we awarded $113K to 88 members. The relatively higher numbers for conferences in FY23 reflect two things. First, we wanted to ensure that money was going out into the community to support equitable participation at conferences alongside the return to in-person formats. Second, we began actively reaching out to conferences to ensure awareness of the GMTA, which greatly increased the number of applications we received and therefore sought to support. After this time of post-pandemic expansion (in GMTA and other programs), we lowered our spending for conferences happening in FY24.
SIGCHI Development Fund
The SDF used to be for SIGCHI members only, but we integrated into this the Conferences and Chapters funds, so that conferences’ and chapters’ events and initiatives could also easily apply for support. Read more about this integration.
Communities: SDF grants have supported growing HCI communities and research areas globally, adding to the richness of the field. Supported initiatives brought diverse disciplines and career stages together at workshops, summer/winter schools and other mentorship initiatives, and new, in-cooperation, or regional conferences. Supported expenses have focused on increasing equitable participation at these valuable events, by enabling, for example, experimental hybrid formats, attendance of students, mentors, or local community partners with financial need, or accessibility services (see details). During FY23, awarded community SDF grants were approx. $89K, supporting 13 events (disbursed $89K; disbursed amounts are generally the same or less, e.g., due to cancellations). During FY24, community SDF grants were approx. $126K, supporting 20 events (disbursed $100K). During FY24, we also had a separate budget for sustainability-related initiatives, which supported two events with $9.5K (disbursed $8K).
Conferences: SDF grants have supported our 25 specialized conferences in experimenting with new initiatives that would allow them to be more accessible, globally inclusive, sustainable, hybrid, equitable, etc. Notably, with some conferences still struggling to break even post-pandemic, these grants have helped maintain innovative and exploratory elements in their operation. Many SDF grants have enabled participation of specific groups, such as doctoral consortium students, practitioners who would enrich the conference (e.g., community-based organizations, artists), and attendees from underrepresented regions of the world. Grants have also supported innovative hybrid formats, as well as services that would enable accessibility and childcare. Another category of supported initiatives includes events to reflect on equity within conference communities, such as panels, diversity, equity, and inclusion lunches, and local community engagement. In FY23, awarded SDF grants for conferences were approximately $133K, supporting 9 events (disbursed $133K). In FY24, they were approximately $114K, supporting 13 events (disbursed $98K). These include the grants given for CHI, listed above.
Chapters: Chapters keep regionally and thematically aligned HCI communities active and anchored. SDF grants have supported SIGCHI chapters in growing and connecting to one another. Types of supported initiatives have included local panels, workshops, and conferences to build community, as well as efforts to rejuvenate chapters and create new ones. In FY23, chapters SDF grants were approximately $24K, supporting 6 events. In FY24, chapters SDF grants were approximately $26K, supporting 8 events.
(c) CHI
CHI is the SIG’s flagship event, and the EC has directed funds to it in various ways over the years. We list these next. Further, the SIG was willing to cover some costs of the conference so that CHI could keep its format without raising registration fees as long as the SIG could comfortably commit funds from its reserves to support this. This was also guidance passed on from prior ECs via Past President Helena Mentis. For CHI22, there was a proposal from the CHI SC to raise registration fees, but the EC instead asked the SC to maintain prior rates so that our members were not hit with an increased fee in the midst of a pandemic. For CHI23, the EC approved a proposal from the SC to raise reg. by 19% to account for the VAT, given that CHI23 was in Germany. CHI24 maintained CHI23’s rate, which effectively meant comparatively greater revenue for the conference per attendee because there was no VAT involved.
- Convention Center: CHI convention center costs are covered by the EC when the conference takes place outside of the US — as per a long-standing SIGCHI policy, which says that the EC bears any costs associated with the convention center after the first $150K have been accounted for by the conference. For CHI23 in Hamburg, the convention center costs went up close to the dates of the conference from 780K+VAT (original contract) to 1.3M+VAT Euros (total amount paid), on account of increased AV needs, security, etc. The EC and CHI SC, alongside ACM guidance, have since agreed that this $150K policy will no longer be in effect starting with CHI26, so that CHI-relevant costs can be fully and accurately represented in conference accounts.
- Accessibility: The previous EC committed to covering accessibility costs at CHI beyond $25K. Upholding this commitment, for CHI22 we allocated approx. $31K and for CHI23 approx. $58.5K.
- Travel Awards: As stated above, we provided support to members via the Gary Marsden Travel Awards. For CHI22 we gave out 80 grants for which the travel and registration came to $169K. For CHI23 we gave out 144 grants for which the travel and registration came to $249K. These are already included in part (b) above.
- Development Fund: We provided support for events and initiatives via the SDF, for 4 events at CHI22 (approx. $15K) and 2 events at CHI23 (approx. 8.5K). These are also already included in part (b) above.
- Other Events: We organized Sunday receptions for volunteers at CHI22 (approx. $40K) and CHI23 (approx. $74K). Other SIGCHI events at CHI22 (such as the annual Chapters Breakfast, TOCHI Lunch, among others) together accounted for approx. $67K. Other SIGCHI events at CHI23 (including the annual Chapters Breakfast, the SIGCHI conferences’ Steering Committee Chairs’ Lunch, TOCHI lunch, among others) together accounted for $80K.
The accounting can be complex because really the conference and the EC draw from the same fund balance. For CHI23, the EC made an internal transfer of $651K to the conference to cover agreed upon costs, including convention center costs and increases, the volunteers reception, SDF/GMTA transfers, and accessibility expenses.
As CHI22 and CHI23 were the two CHIs that took place right after the pandemic, the EC viewed their success as critical for us to re-unify as a community. This is also why we invested in bringing people together to experience and “reCHInnect”.
CHI has long been generating revenue for the SIG. Recognizing however that CHI can no longer be financially viable given the current registration fee structure, lowering sponsorship trends, rising operating costs, and inflation more generally, change is inevitable. Again, the CHI SC has written many blog posts to discuss upcoming changes. We consider it essential for the next EC and the CHI SC to work collaboratively to ensure the SIG’s financial wellbeing when it comes to CHI expenses, particularly with the ACM OPEN transition approaching (on January 1, 2026).
(d) Travel
Since the pandemic, instances of travel per volunteer have mainly reduced. There are a number of reasons for this, including post-pandemic reluctance to travel, rising concerns around carbon emissions, and an increased availability and norm-setting around good hybrid alternatives. Thus, what used to be quarterly in-person multi-day EC meetings before the pandemic changed to hybrid multi-day EC meetings collocated with one or more SIGCHI-sponsored events to maximize engagement and interactions across EC and SIG members — more bang for the travel buck. Also, we now have more committees and thus volunteers (274 roles across committees), and the cost of traveling has risen.
Volunteer travel budgets are created as part of the annual budget exercise. It is important to note that this travel is to support our volunteers in doing what they do for the SIG. Funds are allocated for committee meetings (including but not only the EC) that are considered essential for the committee to make progress on its activities and initiatives. In this subsection, we provide information regarding committee travel based on current records (these may diverge slightly from actual spending).
Meetings and Summits
The EC met a total of 9 times from and including FY22 to FY24 — these were all hybrid meetings where the number of members in attendance ranged from 5 (in Cape Town, in August 2023) to 19 (in Hamburg, at CHI23), and alongside other collocated events. Other committee members also met, including from the CHI Steering (5x), Equity (2x), Latin America (2x), Asia (1x), Sustainability (1x), Publications (1x), Mediterranean (1x), Communications (1x), and Futuring (1x). The details are laid out below.
First, the EC and the CHI SC traveled to and met at CHI22 and CHI23. The CHI conference is an annual event where EC members are encouraged to participate, actively engage with the CHI community, and co-organize various events and initiatives through the week towards building community ties. There is also a post-CHI meeting for both the EC (1.5 days) and the CHI SC (1 day), including some joint sessions. This has been a tradition carried forth from previous ECs.
Second, the EC organized four Summits — in Mumbai (India), Cape Town (South Africa), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Milan (Italy). Alongside each of these 3-day summits where we engaged with SIGCHI members, we also organized a 2–3 day hybrid EC meeting, to prevent additional traveling expenses.
Finally, we held a total of three stand-alone EC meetings in our term. These were in New York (our first 3-day meeting in July 2022, to meet with ACM), Atlanta (a 3-day workshop at the halfway point of our term in March 2023, with multiple committee representatives), and Minneapolis (1.5 days in October 2023, when most of the attendees were also at CSCW).
We provide below an approximate breakdown for what committee travel has been mainly supported during this EC term and to what extent (with data as of May 14, 2024). There are various factors that dictate why these costs are what they are, but we will leave out detailed explanations for now.
APR 2022: CHI in New Orleans, USA
Onsite: EC (15) + CHI SC (13)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $93K
JUL 2022: EC Meeting in NYC, USA
Onsite: EC (7) + ACM (3)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $26K
DEC 2022: EC Meeting + HCI & Friends Summit in Mumbai, India
Onsite: EC (8) + Community (136)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $61K
JAN 2023: CHI SC Meeting in Hawaii, USA
Onsite: CHI SC (20)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $65K
MAR 2023: Asia Committee Meeting in Singapore
Onsite: Asia Committee (5) + Community (67)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $11K
MAR 2023: EC Workshop in Atlanta, USA
Onsite: EC (15) + Pubs/LatAm/Global/Chapters/Sustainability/CHI SC (15)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $68K
APR 2023: CHI in Hamburg, Germany
Onsite: EC (19) + CHI SC (15) + Equity/LatAm/Comms/Futuring (15)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $121K
AUG 2023: EC Meeting + Africa Leadership Summit in Cape Town, South Africa
Onsite: EC (5) + Community (21)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $34K
OCT 2023: EC Meeting in Minneapolis, USA
Onsite: EC (7)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $7K
DEC 2023: EC Meeting + SIGCHI LatAm Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Onsite: EC (8) + LatAm (5) + Community (24)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $44K
JAN 2024: CHI SC Meeting in Barcelona, Spain
Onsite: CHI SC (14)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $40K
FEB 2024: EC Meeting + SIGCHI Futures Summit + MedCHI Kick-Off in Milan, Italy
Onsite: EC (15) + Equity/MedCHI (10) + Conferences (17) + Community (52)
Travel/Hotel/Meeting: $101K
Much of what we do as an EC can be accomplished online, and we have in fact prioritized this. We spend a considerable amount of time clearing our EC tasks via digital means, on a daily basis, crossing many time zones. In-person engagement has been crucial, however, for coming together as a globally diverse team to engage in various in-depth discussions and planning, and for our community outreach events that have been so very critical for growing the community in regions still new to SIGCHI and advancing SIGCHI conversations. See also answers to Q2, Q3, and Q4 below.
(e) Other Things
There are some other numbers that might also leave you curious. Offering the Interactions magazine as a membership benefit will continue to entail approx. $110K annually to cover ACM’s production costs for the magazine. Membership benefits also include Grammarly, for which we paid approx. $15K in FY24. No doubt there are other numbers we have omitted to mention here that you may be curious about. We are happy to provide further clarifications and augment our analyses, although these edits are unlikely to change the broader landscape presented in this post.
Making Financial Decisions as an EC
We (the EC) spend on and for our members, conferences, community/ies, and enabling the success of our volunteering efforts. For each of the items in the EC budget, the extent of risk varies. For example, what we pay for operational support for conferences is a fixed amount, and we are typically bound by multi-year contracts. This is in opposition to the amounts spent by conferences, and thus the ACM overhead, which are less predictable from year to year. There are many factors that shape the relative risks involved, such as with the CHI convention center costs (see this CHI SC post), impacting the SIG’s ability to spend differently every year.
As is the case in the world today, and very much across ACM, inflation and post-pandemic conference attendance have impacted the financials of our conferences, which means that the EC is doing more now to support these conferences in breaking even. At the same time, the FY23 hike in ACM overhead rates (see Section 4 below) means that the more we spend, the more we give in overhead, and at a higher rate than before. Upcoming changes around ACM OPEN will also impact the state of our SIG, and we will need to be prepared for these (see About ACM OPEN).
In our effort to streamline and focus our efforts, we have also made cuts. And if our goal was to minimize spending, there are still numerous places where we could cut — e.g., giving out less (or no) support to our members or communities, not providing customizable tools to our conferences, etc. Indeed, if our SIG’s viability fell under question, it would only be after we had already cut down our spending in these and other ways, so lack of viability is not something for us to be concerned about at this moment. However, we want to be able to spend, from year to year, keeping in mind that there is a delicate balance to be maintained between what we spend on our conferences and communities for today, and what we invest in them for their and the SIG’s future wellbeing.
4. ACM Overhead
In 2022, just prior to FY23, the SIG Governing Board voted to increase the ACM overhead charged to all SIGs. This amount is gathered from SIGs and goes towards the SIG Overhead Reserve Fund (SORF). For FY23, SIGCHI’s overhead was $593K. For FY24 it is projected to be approx. $770K. With the prior method of calculation (applicable up to FY22), the overhead would have been $399K in FY23 (-$194K) and $523K in FY24 (-$247K). That is almost a half million in additional payments to the ACM over the last two years. It is also crucial to keep this number in mind when making any comparisons across years and/or across ECs. SIGs have no control over this overhead calculation. This amount is a percentage of the SIG’s total spending, and it increases as the SIG’s spending increases, from one year to another. There is also a possibility that this calculation will change in coming years, if and when ACM determines that the SORF has grown substantially.
More Questions
We received more questions in the SIGCHI Town Hall at CHI24 that we answer below. We have also added on/broadened some questions to share discussions and deliberations that we often engage in among ourselves.
Q1. Should the EC spend less on conference tool development (e.g., QOALA and PWA)?
It depends. If there is a need to reduce SIGCHI expenses, then yes, this would be one way to do so. We might also choose to invest in developing these tools to improve them and expand their utility for more conferences across ACM. The contract signed for these tools dates back to the previous EC (and is up for renewal on July 1, 2024), which chose to invest significant resources into creating tools that could help conference organizers with creating their programs and offering an easier experience to conference attendees. Now that the core technology is developed, it would be worthwhile to re-evaluate how much to direct into new development versus operating in maintenance mode. We are currently exploring whether other ACM conferences would like to use these tools as well, to potentially allow for cost-sharing. For now, we have offered these services for free to conferences not under SIGCHI (ASSETS and FAccT) because there is no way at present for ACM to conduct a funds transfer for such services across SIGs. We are hoping that conversations with the SIG Governing Board will offer a pathway for this.
Q2. Are we spending more than prior ECs on travel?
If we leave out the pandemic years, and further factor in the rise in travel costs and overall inflation, we are not spending more on travel. For instance, travel and meeting expenses were $382K in FY20 and $388K in FY23, those being the second years of the previous and this EC (when EC activity tends to grow after a first year of setting up). Note that comparing other years of these ECs would not make sense, because there was no EC travel from February 2020 to April 2022. Further, we have aimed to ensure that any EC member’s travel is for more than one event, so that volunteers are not traveling for just an EC meeting (as used to be the case). Large as the EC and its committees are, very few of these committees have traveled in our term, and almost all have maintained hybrid options for their meetings.
Q3. Should the EC spend less on travel?
The answer to this, we believe, is always yes. This EC has been very mindful of travel expenses, and did radically bring down committee travel costs post-pandemic, by standardizing a hybrid format and protocol for meetings and by minimizing meeting costs by engaging local organizers when possible, and meeting in university settings where we did not have to pay for room and tech costs. In addition, we made our travels count for more by coupling each of our EC meetings with other commitments or events, such as the CHI conference, or community engagement in Rio, Cape Town, Mumbai, and Milan. This EC’s policy that prevents SIGCHI funds being used for alcohol has also helped in cutting spending during meals — small expenses that can add up. These efforts (among others) have brought down costs in comparison to prior EC travels on average per volunteer (also see 4 below). We can certainly still do and should do better, even as we recognize that community outreach and the efficacy of committee work may deliver valuable benefits through travel.
Q4. Do our many committees/volunteers impact our funds?
It is true that we have many more volunteers in our ranks than we have had before. We have strongly encouraged EC members to form committees in cases where one could help them execute their roles and responsibilities, and ensure continuity when volunteers have to step down for any reason. Volunteering on these committees also serves to provide exposure to those new to SIGCHI, which is key for sustaining and growing our volunteer base. Volunteer travel does make a dent when the numbers are large, even if per volunteer expenses are lower. Note however that very few of our committees have traveled to meet in person. Those who do wish to meet in person must offer justification for meeting when the annual budget is crafted. Further, all committee meetings are encouraged to be hybrid to eliminate any pressure on volunteers to be onsite.
Q5. Should the EC spend less on Community Support?
It depends. This EC, and the one before it, have both been intent on offering financial support for conference travel to members who need it, and offering grants that would allow local/regional sub-communities to flourish. These mechanisms have become systematized and better subscribed by now, due to consistent efforts to communicate these to our conferences and members. Certainly, if the SIG’s fund balance is dipping too low, this is an easy line item to cut or even zero out, until the reserves are built up again.
Q6. Should the EC spend less on CHI?
CHI is one of the SIG’s key financial commitments and can have a significant impact on the SIG’s fund balance. Sometimes this is by an amount that the SIG has a priori chosen to spend on CHI. Other times, it may come as an unanticipated expense, in which event it can have consequences for our fund balance and unsettle other budgeted activities and initiatives for the current/following fiscal years. The latter is not the preferred scenario, but may be unavoidable for various reasons.
The CHI SC has reinforced multiple times that running CHI is expensive and the conference has not been breaking even because revenue streams have not grown. That is, industry sponsorships remain low, and registration fees have been held low by the EC. Regarding the latter, the EC has been keen to not place additional pressure on our members’ finances while we could afford this, especially given rising inflation rates and the likely lag by when members would be able to afford a hike in fees. We were also keen that no hikes take place without duly engaging the CHI community such that it could appreciate the reasons for these hikes and was not caught by surprise.
The accounting for CHI could be more straightforward, such that all CHI-related expenses fall under the conference, sans subsidies, including the convention center costs that were previously covered by the EC. This is a direction we are moving in, in conversation with the CHI SC and on ACM guidance. Earlier, the conference would cover up to $150K of the convention center costs, with the EC covering the remainder. This remainder would only show up on the EC budget and not on the conference budget, potentially causing confusion if convention center needs/costs changed close to the conference dates.
With upcoming changes to the CHI conference format and finances, our SIG should be in a position to “spend less on CHI” and direct more resources and support to our “non-CHI” conferences and communities.
Q7. Why have some conferences lost money?
Many factors have impacted our conferences’ finances, in SIGCHI as well as other SIGs within ACM. Conferences have been returning from the pandemic and still recovering their participant numbers, adopting the PACM HCI model which eliminates the need to attend in person, incurring hybrid costs, and suffering from decreasing sponsorship funds and general inflationary pressures. All these have impacted conference revenues and driven up conference budgets. This is by no means a trend unique to SIGCHI; a survey conducted by the SIG Governing Board of all SIGs showed that many conferences across ACM are still en route to steadier footing, post-pandemic. At the same time, SIGCHI has the advantage of being able to learn and knowledge-share across many more conferences than any other SIG, and this is exactly where our focus has been.
Q8. How will ACM OPEN impact the SIG’s finances?
In two crucial ways. First, our conferences in general, and conference authors in particular, will be impacted based on the percentages of corresponding authors of Article-Processing-Charge (APC)-eligible contributions across our conferences. You can see on this spreadsheet how your favorite SIGCHI conference would be impacted if ACM OPEN were in place for 2023. Second, the Digital Library returns to the SIGs will change, and it is as yet unclear how this change will go into effect. The SIG Governing Board is keeping a close look on these numbers as we approach the December 31, 2025 ACM OPEN transition date. To be prepared to face the implications of ACM OPEN for SIGCHI, we will be working closely with our conferences in identifying fallbacks when there are impacts on their finances from APC-eligible contributions not covered by ACM OPEN.
In Closing
The aim of this post was to share numbers while also providing a deeper understanding of the major line items that are on our SIG’s budget, and the deliberations that shape them. We hope that it is evident from this post, as also from prior blog posts aiming to document SIG updates in recent years, that the current EC has invested a great deal, both in terms of volunteer labor and finances, towards community, conference, and member support. This was in part also because we were charged with pulling the SIG out of the pandemic. Our commitment was to revive our community and SIG, support our students, early career scholars, and those in financial hardship, and nurture our smaller communities across the HCI globe. Perhaps not every EC would choose to do this, but it is the choice we made, seeing where our SIG was in July 2021. We have since had a productive tenure, including four Summits that have helped drive community engagement in nascent pockets of SIGCHI and beyond. Driving up costs on account of “doin’ the work” — for our 5K+ members — is a source of pride and gratitude. For the gift of this opportunity to serve, we thank you.
Many thanks to SIGCHI Executive Committee members for immense help in co-authoring this post, and to CHI Steering Committee Chair Cliff Lampe for comments regarding CHI. Also thanks to SIG Governing Board Chair Jens Palsberg for his review.
We hope that this post both invokes and addresses SIG members’ curiosities, to leave us a more financially aware SIG. Please let us know if you have further requests for information or errors to correct.
