EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND BOARD OF TRUSTEE 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 5-6, in Alexandria, VA.
The meeting was an opportunity for the Board to see — at a gala housewarming reception on Friday, April 5th — ASOR’s fabulous new home in Alexandria, at 209 Commerce Street. At that reception, moreover, we were able to announce that at the request of the extremely generous anonymous donor who has taken the lead in contributing to our building fund, ASOR’s new home will be named in honor of our late ASOR colleague, James Francis Strange. I am writing this report on April 15th, a little more than a year after Jim’s death, on March 23, 2018, and it is deeply gratifying to me to know that ASOR is able to mark the anniversary of Jim’s passing with such a permanent and significant memorial.
The ASOR Annual Meeting
The major item on the agenda for this spring’s Executive Committee and Board of Trustees meetings was a discussion of the future location of the ASOR Annual Meeting. The Executive Committee and Board received a long and detailed report (82 data-packed pages!) from the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of the Annual Meeting, which included recommendations about what ASOR might do going forward.
Most ASOR members know the problem. In 1997, when ASOR separated from the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), ASOR committed to hold its annual meeting in the same city, or at least in reasonable geographical proximity, to SBL, and within the same general time frame (during the days immediately prior to the start of the SBL meeting). ASOR members, and the ASOR Executive Committee and Board, reaffirmed this decision at the ASOR Annual Meeting in 2007, and I think it is fair to say that this “meet independently, but in geographical and temporal conjunction with SBL” is a model that worked well for ASOR, and especially for joint SBL-ASOR members, through 2013.
But after SBL rejoined forces with the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2011, it became harder and harder for ASOR to secure meeting and hotel space proximate to the combined and very large AAR-SBL meeting. That meant we were in Buckhead in 2015, while AAR-SBL was in downtown Atlanta; we were in a suburban resort in San Antonio in 2016, while AAR-SBL was downtown; in 2017, we were at the waterfront Westin in Boston, while AAR-SBL was downtown at the Hynes Convention Center; and we were at the Denver Tech Park in 2018, while AAR-SBL was in downtown Denver.
Going forward, we continue to face challenges, especially when AAR-SBL is scheduled to meet in smaller cities such as San Antonio (2021, 2023, 2029) and Denver (2022, 2026). Already, then, in 2015, I appointed an Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of the Annual Meeting, charged with developing recommendations regarding a way forward. Many of you will remember that this committee conducted an all-member discussion on Thursday of the 2018 Annual Meeting, to allow ASOR’s members to present their views and discuss issues and options. The committee also conducted a member-wide survey on the future of the Annual Meeting in 2016 and again in February of this year. This 2019 survey was especially important: although it was long — 21 questions — about 580 people (more than 1/3 of the ASOR membership) responded. That’s an extraordinary response rate, and I invite ASOR members to review the results, published in both summary form and as a full data set here.
In its report that assimilated and analyzed all this (and other) data, the Ad Hoc Committee recommended that ASOR find a middle ground going forward: a way that could sustain ASOR’s historic ties to SBL and enable the many joint ASOR-SBL members to attend both meetings, yet could correct the issue that many ASOR members clearly find unsatisfactory: meeting in the outskirts of cities like San Antonio (as in 2016) and Denver (as in 2018) because we cannot secure hotel and meeting space downtown. In the end, the Board adopted what we are calling “the flexibility model,” to wit:
ASOR will make all reasonable efforts to meet in its current time frame (Wednesday to Saturday pattern) in the same city as SBL. In years in which it is not reasonable and economically feasible, ASOR will conduct its meeting in a city that best serves the greatest number of its constituencies.
The Board vote in favor of this decision was unanimous.
It remains only for me to thank the members of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of the Annual Meeting for their extremely hard work. They are Gary Arbino (Chair), Kent Bramlett, William Caraher, Sidnie White Crawford, Erin Darby, Karen Rubinson, and Eric Welch. I know (because I am on the e-mail chain) that they performed over and beyond the call of duty, and we in ASOR all owe them our deepest gratitude for everything they have done to make sure the Board could make the best informed decision possible.
The ASOR Budget
Another 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 19), which will come to an end on June 30, and approving the budget for the upcoming fiscal year (FY 20), which starts on July 1. The FY 19 budget is balanced – indeed, almost perfectly so, as we imagine ending the year with just a small surplus of $23! For FY 20, the Board approved a budget that also is projecting a small surplus, of $750, with projected revenues of $1,738,000 and projected expenses of $1,737,250.
In both FY 19 and FY 20, our budget — both on the income and expenses side — has a major new item: designated gifts for our new building and its furnishings and maintenance, In FY 19, we anticipate receiving $600,000 in revenue from these designated gifts, income that we will then apply to the purchase price of our building ($1.1 million) at closing (scheduled for April 24th!) and to paying down the balance we owe (financed through a short-term equity line of credit). In FY 20, we will likewise use the $400,000 in revenue we anticipate receiving as designated gifts to pay down our equity loan
We also received, in February, an additional and extraordinarily generous pledge of $450,000 that is conditional to a 2:1 match: i.e., for every $2 of the pledge, we need to raise $1 (or $225,000 total). So far, we have done exceptional work in meeting this challenge, as we have already raised $156,000 in the two-and-a-half months since the challenge was announced. Nevertheless, we need everyone’s help in raising the last $69,000. If we can raise this last $69,000, that will bring our total fund-raising up to $1.6 million, enough both to buy the building, pay financing, inspection, and closing costs, and to establish a $450,000 endowment (with a $22,500/year payout) to cover building maintenance and annual operating expenses.
ASOR Officers
My term as ASOR’s President and the terms of ASOR’s Board Chair, Richard Coffman, and ASOR’s Vice-President, Sharon Herbert, all expire at the end of December 2019, and the Officers Nominations Committee (ONC) worked hard before the Board meeting to identify how these positions should be filled going forward. The ONC continues, moreover, its hard work, as it is still deliberating regarding a new Vice-President.
But I am thrilled to announce that Sharon Herbert has been elected as ASOR’s new President, for an initial three-year term, and that Richard Coffman has been elected to serve for a second three-year term as Board Chair. Both terms will run from January 1, 2020, through December 31, 2022. Having worked with Sharon as ASOR Vice-President for the past six years, and with Richard as in his role as Board Chair for the past three-and-a-half years (and before that in his role as ASOR Treasurer), I can say unreservedly and with complete authority that ASOR going forward will be in the best possible hands. I join all the Board’s members in congratulating both Sharon and Richard on their appointments, and I know all of us offer them our gratitude and thanks for their willingness to serve ASOR in such important leadership roles.
In addition, the Board welcomed three new members: Emily Miller Bonney and Eric Welch (both Membership-elected Trustees) and Ann Sahlman (a Board-elected Trustee). We’re very happy to have these new colleagues on our Board.
Other Business
The Board finally considered several other matters of ASOR business. Probably most of note for ASOR members, the Board affirmed the President’s and Vice-President’s initiative regarding the creation of another Ad Hoc Committee, this one charged with developing a Code of Conduct for the ASOR Annual Meeting. Many other learned societies have developed such codes, and recent events at the meetings of organizations such as the Society of Classical Studies (see here and here) and the Society for American Archaeology (see here) demonstrate the need for ASOR to have a similar Code of Conduct in place. Relatedly, the Board was pleased to affirm the recently Developed Code of Conduct for Fieldwork Projects that had been put forward by the Committee on Archaeological Research and Policy (CAP).
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Overall, the Board and Executive Committee had a busy set of meetings—but also a productive one, and I am thankful, as I always am, for all that ASOR’s Board members do to ensure that ASOR continues to thrive.
