EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING REPORT
By Susan Ackerman
ASOR President
Every spring, the ASOR Board of Trustees and the Board’s Executive Committee meet to engage in discussions and undertake items of business that have come forward since the Executive Committee’s and Board’s gatherings at the November Annual Meeting. This year, the Executive Committee and the Board met during the weekend of April 20-21, in Tucson, AZ. We were hosted by ASOR Development Committee Chair Ed Wright and the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, and both Ed and the staff at the Center went out of their way to make our meetings run smoothly and to facilitate some great “extracurricular” events, including a Middle Eastern banquet followed by stargazing at the University of Arizona’s historic Steward Observatory. Thanks Ed!
The ASOR Budget
The major item on the agenda for the ASOR Board’s spring meetings is always the budget, both a review of the budget for the current fiscal year (FY 18), which will come to an end on June 30, and approving the budget for the upcoming fiscal year (FY 19), which starts on July 1. The FY 18 budget forecast is balanced—indeed, almost perfectly so, as we imagine ending the year with just a small surplus of $80.50! For FY 19, the Board approved a balanced budget of just over $1.3 million.
This FY 19 budget is notably smaller than our FY 18 budget, which totaled a little over $2.2 million. The reason is that our current funding for ASOR’s Cultural Heritage Initiatives (CHI) that comes via our cooperative agreement with the United States Department of State ($900,000) expires on June 30, 2018, and while we hope this cooperative agreement will be extended for another year, this has not yet been determined.
The FY 19 budget also includes some other “unknowns”: most notably, “unknowns” regarding costs we will incur in making ASOR’s big office move, from our long-time home in Boston to the Washington, D.C., area (click here for story). These “unknowns” include moving expenses, costs associated with furnishing new office space, and, ultimately, costs associated with purchasing a permanent home for ASOR. Other “unknowns” are costs in terms of salaries for the new staff members we will need to hire in our new Washington-based office, even as we retain our current Boston staff and continue running some of our operations out of Boston through December 31, 2018, for the sake of continuity and so that we might continue to benefit from our staff’s significant expertise and long-term experience in managing ASOR. The Board did note, with regret, that although we have offered our current staff the opportunity to move with us, right now, only one of them (our newest hire, Office Assistant Marta Ostovich) intends to pursue that possibility.
The Board also discussed details associated with the timing of this move, and especially the offer extended to us by Virginia Theological Seminary, a long-time ASOR Institutional Member, to provide office space through March 2019 on their campus in Alexandria, VA. Since Alexandria—where many other non-profit organizations are located and an easy commute to downtown Washington—is the D.C.-area location we have tentatively as the site of ASOR’s potential new home, having a temporary base at Virginia Theological Seminary as we get our bearings and work to identify potential properties that we might buy is a great boon.
ASOR Officers
The terms of ASOR’s Vice-President, Sharon Herbert, and ASOR’s Secretary, Lynn Swartz Dodd, expire at the end of December 2018, and the Officers Nominations Committee (ONC) worked hard before the Board meeting to identify how these positions should be filled going forward. After extensive deliberations, the ONC decided to recommend to the Board that Sharon Herbert’s term as Vice-President be extended for one more year, until December 31, 2019, so that the Vice-President’s term would be “in sync” with that of the President (which ends on December 31, 2019). The ONC also recommended to the Board that Ann-Marie Knoblauch be appointed as ASOR Secretary. The Board unanimously voted to approve these nominations, and so congratulations and thanks to both Sharon and Ann-Marie on their appointments!
The Board also took time to remember ASOR’s long-time Board member and Secretary James F. (Jim) Strange, who passed away on March 23, 2018 (see https://www.asor.org/news/2018/04/remembrance-strange-groh and https://www.asor.org/news/2018/04/remembrance-strange-meyers). We were also honored to appoint Jim’s widow, Carolyn Midkiff Strange, to fill out the remainder of Jim’s current term on the Board. Like Jim, Carolyn has been a member of ASOR for more than 50 years, and like Jim, she has been a generous donor to ASOR (see, for example, https://www.asor.org/fellowships/excavation-grants-fellowships/strangemidkiff-excavation-fellowships/). Carolyn was also a crucial partner in Jim’s excavations in the Galilee, at Khirbet Shema‘, Meiron, and Sepphoris. We are very pleased she has agreed to serve on the Board in Jim’s stead.
In addition, the Board welcomed two new members: Lisa Ackerman (no relation to me!) and Thomas Schneider. We’re very happy to have these new colleagues on our Board.
Other Business
The Board also considered several other matters of ASOR business, especially administrative changes we are putting into place in conjunction with our upcoming office move. Members may notice, for example, that we will be changing the way we handle the behind-the-scenes work of journal subscriptions—but be assured, what you won’t notice is any change in the journals themselves! We are also looking at moving the ASOR Archives out of the ASOR Office and into a more appropriate facility (one with better climate control, for example). Again, though, members should not notice any change to what is most important for their needs—the accessibility of the ASOR Archives for research purposes.
Finally, the Board adopted a new Gift Acceptance Policy (https://www.asor.org/about-asor/policies/gift-acceptance), to help inform both our donors and ASOR itself. And, in an effort to make sure we, the Board, is serving you to the best of our abilities, we committed ourselves to a new “Trustee Pledge” (https://www.asor.org/about-asor/committees/trustee-pledge).
* * *
Overall, the Board and Executive Committee had a busy set of meetings—but also a productive one, and I left Tucson thankful, as I always am, for all that ASOR’s Board members do to ensure that ASOR continues to thrive.
