Hi Jim, Thanks for this background, it helps understand where the IEEE are involved. While it sounds like some good changes have happened in how the main IEEE looks at Society's, it highlights significant effort is still required to get in line with efficient operating.
At the EMC show I'll discuss this further with the Society folks. Keep up the good work! Sincerely Derek. Jim Bacher wrote: > I wanted to fill in some details on how IEEE Society's work as most > members > are not aware of the details. > > Society membership funds in general do not support the running of the > IEEE. > The societies do have to pay for IEEE resources that they use (we like to > call it the IEEE TAX). In general societies are run as small non > profit businesses. > So we are required to do all the things a normal business would have > to do. We > have to have a Board Of Directors (BoD), accounting, voting, and on > and on. The > IEEE provides the required accounting functions for the society. They take > care of sending out the mailings for the voting and count the returned > votes. They > write checks and pay our bills. They maintain our bank accounts. The > more members > we have the less the IEEE TAX burden. Some of the society funds goes > to cover the > cost of the TAB meetings. The way society's were taxed has been > changed twice over > the last 6 years. It is now in our favor, which it was not for the > first 4 years. > > As part of having a BoD we are required to have in person meetings. > The society > has to cover the cost of the meeting rooms for those meetings. We do > every thing > we can to minimize the travel costs for our BoD members and to > minimize the cost > to the society to hold the meetings. In fact one of the comments made > was that > our society was too frugal (I do not understand why that is a bad thing). > > Once you get past the basic costs of running a non profit society, the > rest of > the funds are typically used to fund things like the Distinguished > Lecturer (DL) > programs. Some of the funds go into what is called reserves. A > society is required > to have enough reserves to cover 50% of their yearly expenses. At this > time we do > not have the funds to support such a DL program. Some of the bigger > societies use > the extra funds to send BoD members out to other countries to promote > new chapters > (we do not do that). Some societies have employees, such as full time > editors for > their journals and publications. > > The emc-pstc list will survive even if the society does not. Even > though the people > who started the effort to create the society started also started the > email list as > part of the effort, the IEEE HQ understands the value of the the > emc-pstc list and > will consider it as part of their current humanitarian programs. The > IEEE has never > billed the society for any costs of running the email list. We do > administer our own > list, but have on occasion required their help in fixing issues. > Servers are not free. > They do require administration, replacement, upgrades, electricity, > etc. If a server > starts having a lot of use sometimes some of its work has to be spread > to other > servers. The IEEE does backup the servers and has backup servers off > site for disaster > recovery. The "free" list servers shove a lot of advertisement in > every email, which > we do not do. By the way the last time I checked with the IEEE, the > emc-pstc list was > the busiest list on the server so they are well aware of it. Consider > we have about > 1,000 members and about 25 emails a day, which makes about 25,000 > emails that have > to be processed for it daily. > > As others have said we have not done a lot of advertising/promotion of > the society or > its symposium on the email list. Most organization would have done so > on a monthly > bases. My hopes are that you have gotten enough value out of it to > consider supporting > the society. Either by being a member or going to the symposium. I > know the email > list has been a significant help to me and a resource I do not want to > lose. In a way > even responding to any email on this list server is supporting the > society. > > TAB is all of the society and council presidents and should not be > confused with IEEE > HQ. TAB will have to vote on what ever is proposed by TMC and the > Society Review > Committee (SRC). As my term as PSES President ends on December 31 of > 2009, the next > PSES society president will be the one who will argue in the societies > behalf at the > meeting. I intend to be at the meeting when the motion makes it to the > TAB floor for voting. > As this is an open meeting any of you who would like to say a few > words can attend the > meeting and speak up. There are other societies that will stand behind > us as well. > > When we go into the review process we need to be able to identfy the > actions we did to > attempt to get to the 1,000 membership number. I am sure that if we > did not at least send > a note to the emc-pstc list that would be a significant negative. So > you will be seeing > notes about society membership and symposium attendance from me for > the rest of the year. > The future ones may will not mention numbers, just friendly reminders. > At the end of the > year I will let the list and our society members know where we stand > on membership. We > will also let you know when and where the motion on our society will > make it to the floor > of TAB in case anyone would like to attend. > > > Jim > President IEEE PSES > > > - > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society > emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your > e-mail to <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > > All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at > http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc > Graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. can be posted to > that URL. > > Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ > Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html > List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html > > For help, send mail to the list administrators: > Scott Douglas <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Mike Cantwell <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > > For policy questions, send mail to: > Jim Bacher <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > David Heald <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> >
