Registration Fund Review & Recommendation Su14

ELC Membership Bylaws and Registration Fund Review – 2014-15 

The Spring ELC meeting’s Budget report made it apparent that our plans for spending down the previously growing fund were successful, so much so that, if we continued to spend as planned in the typical budget for meeting catering expenses, ATL Conference support, ELC Award and ELC Professional Development activities, we’d be exceeding the fees collected.  That led the assignment of the task of reviewing our registration process and presentation of a proposal at the summer meeting.

Constitution and Bylaws

In the process of that review, the executive team determined we could change the Bylaws language on the registration fund and related statements.  The proposed language changes to be voted on at the Summer meeting are as follows:

Constitution:

Article 4. Membership

Section 4. Regular voting members, participating members, guests and council/commission liaisons will pay an annual ELC meetings registration fee for paying expenses related to ELC business and reimbursing an institution's or member's expenses associated with hosting meetings.

Bylaws:

Article 3. Duties of Officers

Section 1. Chairperson.

I.             Identify procedures and an institution to who will collect, create an account for and process transactions for the "ELC meetings registration fee" funds.

J.          Plan for inclusion of ELC registration fee fund reports and

recommendations on meeting agendas. Plan and provide for an annual "ELC meetings registration fee" account

report for the membership at the Spring meeting which details income, expenses and the account balance.

                              K.            Review the amount identified as the annual ELC meetings registration fee

and recommend changes. 

Section 3. Past-Chairperson

A.      Will represent the ELC at the Instruction Commission and present other

   information as needed. (Renumber the current A. B. to B. and C.) 

Section 4. Treasurer/membership Coordinator

B.         Prepare and maintain the membership list for the ELC that will be used

as a reference for ELC registration fee fund collection., for the WAOL Blackboard ELC Organization login accounts and for the ELC public Web site.

C.         Work with the ELC registration fee fund host institution to monitor the

account, invoice member institutions, receive registration funds from members and issue meeting expense payments or other disbursements approved by the ELC from the ELC registration fee fund.

D.         Report on the status of the ELC registration fee fund at ELC meetings.

            Provide quarterly and annual ELC registration fee fund

reports for the membership which detail income, expenses and the account balance.

                              E.            Review the amount identified as the annual ELC registration fee

and recommend changes.

Section 5. Regional Reps

A.           The regional rep will meet with new members in their region to provide

information about the ELC procedures and activities. (adjust following letters to B. - G)

Registration Fee Fund

The Instruction Commission had a brief discussion at their Spring meeting on registration fees and we received some feedback from our representative, Bob Mohrbacher.  Three key points were:

·        Raising fees is okay as long as it is not due to the need to meet the needs of either of the following items.

·        Guests in attendance should be charged a fee in a consistent manner.

·        Fees must not be paying for food that was not part of the meeting (Ex.; no box lunches ‘to go’ at the end of the meeting). 

On the topic of guests, we have not been very ‘controlling’ on how things work when they attend.  We don’t take a poll before each meeting and use that for a ‘count’ to give to the caterer.  We make a general assumptions, based on past in-person participation by colleges and the total roster of participating members as identified by ELCs.  Usually, finding that caterers give more food than we can eat (or the number we’ve planned for falls short), we are very forgiving and let guests or ‘member substitutes’ eat without added charge. 

Greater attendance via Collaborate is another pattern we’ve not tried to adjust for in a direct way.  We invoice on a flat rate just once a year for all “members” and those identified as ‘participating’ on the membership list. 

There is a delicate balance between the effort we exert ‘managing’ funds and the benefit we gain in precisely forecasting the financial need.  We’ve avoided procedures that add a layer of accounting which would be required for assigning dues based on each and every participating person, or doing invoices after the fact based on actual participation.  It is a logistical challenge to get the annual payments submitted, received and accounted for with one invoice cycle per year!

The options below were discussed by the Executive Team and Option 3 was our recommendation to the membership.  The options take into consideration our plan for the past year where we wanted to continue spending down the surplus (and that got us back to roughly a surplus of $614, with EL Award expenses still not be finalized). Criteria used in brainstorming the options included:

·        balancing revenue and expenses,

·        fairness to members,

·        impact of an increase on ELCs,

·        impact of decreased ‘services’,

·        treasurer’s effort required to manage logistics of payments,

·        complexity for Council and hosts when planning/implementing meetings and

·        flexibility for accommodating guests/variability in attendance patterns.

·        Are there others we should consider?

We used these ideas to start the conversation with the ELC leadership.

Option 1 – Increase Dues

At the last meeting I projected the dues could go up to $208.51 (maybe round up to $210 or down to 200 and cut some off the PD Activities) to remain in balance.  I guess that could be the first option. This could be coupled with a tightening of how we address ‘guests’.  Perhaps by recording their attendance and adding 1/4th of the annual dues per guest to the subsequent year’s invoice for their college.

Advantages: Budget balances. It may force ELCs to rethink the number of members attending

Disadvantage: Those attending via Collaborate support those attending in-person. Eliminates the support for our PD either directly or at the ATL conference. It may force ELCs to cut back the number of members attending. This method doesn’t accommodate guests or changes in in-person attendance plans.

Option 2 – Decrease Expenses

We could decrease expenses, assuming the $7,050 dues as stated on the current plan, which falls $2,450 short of last year’s $9,500 spending plan where we appear to be really spending about $8,000 (due to no ELC PD expenses). As was discussed at the meeting, cutting Teaching-Learning Conference Support and the ELC PD amount and leave other things as they stand would make up the difference with the total spending to $7,000. 

Advantages: Budget balances.

Disadvantage: Those attending via Collaborate support those attending in-person. Eliminates the support for our PD either directly or at the ATL conference. This method doesn’t accommodate guests or changes in in-person attendance plans.

Option 3 – Increase Dues Slightly/Decrease Expenses Slightly

This idea would involve cutting some expenses like the ATL conference support, adjusting the ELC PD to a lesser amount and cutting the target figure for meeting catering slightly.  One scenario is noted below that would work with a $175/member annual dues for the current 47 listed participants which equals $8,225 in revenue. We could play with the numbers.

Advantages: We keep the budget in balance. The increase is not extreme. There are still resources for ELC PD should something arise.  We don’t totally eliminate the ATL conference support.

Disadvantages: Spending plans are fixed and revenue could change if colleges reduce the participating members. Those participating via Collaborate support those attending in-person. This method doesn’t accommodate guests or changes in in-person attendance plans.

Option 4 – Realign Dues and Expenses

One idea I had was to get the members to designate per-meeting participation in-person and via Collaborate, then adjust their college invoices to match. I would envision each member specifying the number of in-person meetings they plan to attend in the year. Guest participation could also be factored in.  For example, if I were planning to attend all four, my dues would be $150, three would be $112.50, two would be $75 and one would be $37.50. If I were bringing a guest to the Fall meeting, I could add another $37.50. We could decide to keep the ELC PD activities and the ATL Support and gauge the rate accordingly. For example if we kept both of those at their current amounts, we’d adjust to $200 for four meetings…or we could propose another mix of what we’d pay for and adjust the rates accordingly.

 Advantages: Hosts get very accurate participant counts in advance for vendor quotes. Those that attend via Collaborate aren’t paying for services they don’t get. It offers more flexibility for members in planning for their council participation or that of guests.

Disadvantages: Members would have to make a plan on a per-meeting basis in advance and commit to it. This method doesn’t directly accommodate guests or changes in in-person attendance plans. It would require the ELC to map out annual expenses more carefully by the Spring meeting so members can make their plans, allowing the treasurer to collect those plan details, set meeting expense amounts for upcoming hosts and then initiate the annual invoices.

Option 5 – Pay as You Go

The last idea that I had was to implement some sort of pre-payment registration system or invoice after each meeting based on who attended in-person.  Meeting hosts would have to specify costs and arrive at a registration figure for each meeting

Advantages: Closely tie costs and expenses to participation. Those attending via Collaborate are not supporting those attending in-person.

Disadvantages: The approach would require a great deal more payment setup, tracking, accounting and follow-up for the Treasurer and their staff.  Each college business office could have more payments to process (or there would be a cost for maintaining an e-payment system, unless a college has something in place that could be used for this). It would make it more difficult for ELCs to budget for their local annual expenditures when each meeting could be a different amount.

The Constitution and Bylaws changes above, and the recommendation, will be discussed at the Summer 2014 meeting.