The table of recent CCC finances contains a summary of the financial reports of the eight most recent CCCs. The income mainly derives from the registration fees, but some years the local organizers also manage to obtain substantial amounts of sponsoring. On the expense side, the table of finances singles out the cost of producing the proceedings, and the service fee that IEEE charges the conference. The bulk of the expenses are due to operational costs. In FCRC years the total also includes overhead charged by the FCRC organization. The amount Paid to IEEE does not include the payment to IEEE for producing the proceedings; it is the sum of the service fee and the balance of the income and the expenses.
The column for 2012 in the table of finances looks rather alarming. The row Paid to IEEE suggests that the registration fees could have been reduced to half or less, had CCC been independent. Although some additional factors need to be taken into account (see below), the conclusion is accurate. That being said, 2012 was a rather exceptional year. For other recent years the figures are less dramatic.
Service fee. Until 2008 the IEEE service fee was calculated as 14% of the other expenses. In 2009 IEEE raised the fee to 20%, and imposed a lower bound of $5K. CCC gets the following in return:
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Insurance. IEEE insures the conference organizers against liability for bodily injury and damage to property (up to $1M). According to the CoLT and Random organizers, most conference facilities nowadays have their own insurance for this, and these organizers do not buy additional insurance. Should CCC need to buy liability insurance, they told me a quote of $375 per year.
IEEE also provides insurance for business crime but the deductible is several times higher than the yearly budget of CCC. Cancellation insurance is not included in the service fee.
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Financial backing. See “surplus” below.
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Funding. TCMF (co)sponsors CCC, FOCS, and LICS, and receives from IEEE a total annual stipend of $5K (and recently possibly more; see further). The stipend is used to fund the CCC best student paper award (currently $750 per year).
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Help with negotiating hotel contracts. CCC did not make use of this service in the last 15 years (and possibly never did).
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Advances for payments. CCC did not make use of this service in the last 15 years (and possibly never did). The income from the early registrations suffices.
Surplus. IEEE does not allow TCMF or any of its constituent conferences to carry over money from year to year. Instead, IEEE absorbs the yearly balance, be it a surplus or a deficit. Via a 10% contingency requirement in the budget IEEE tries to ensure that conferences do not incur a deficit. In case there is a deficit in a given year, IEEE imposes a raise in the registration fees for the next year. In case of a surplus, it used to be the case that conferences or TCMF did not see anything of it back, but the situation somewhat changed in 2010. Since then the amount of the yearly TCMF stipend has become the maximum of $5K and 50% of the conference surpluses from the most recently closed TCMF conferences in good standing. In 2010 TCMF contributed $2.5K from this pot for the 25th anniversary celebration of CCC. Other than this and the yearly funding for the best student paper award CCC has not received any other financial support from TCMF. FOCS has received partial TCMF support for student travel awards.
Given this structure, local organizers are encouraged to strive for a positive but small balance. It is very difficult to estimate the income, though, as the attendance varies a lot from year to year. On the expense side, local organizers can play with the catering during the conference, and some have been very successful in achieving a small positive balance. Nevertheless, spending extra money on catering in order to avoid a return to IEEE is not ideal.
Conclusion. Taking everything into account, in recent years the net cost of the affiliation with IEEE has been between 20% and 25% of the registration fees. As an exceptional case, in 2012 the registration fees could have been reduced by more than 50% had CCC been independent. These are substantial potential savings, but they are moderated by the travel and accommodation costs for attending the conference. See the table of finances for the registration fees of the last eight years.
As a side remark, looking over the financial reports, I am convinced that substantial reductions in the registration fees are also possible by creating some institutional memory to help the local organizers with issues like banking, on-line registration, sponsoring, etc.
Apart from the cost associated with being an IEEE conference, the fact that IEEE conferences cannot carry over money impedes any type of long-term planning, e.g., to provide travel support for students from non-US universities. (In the last two years we could support students from US-universities through a grant from NSF.)
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