Looking Back to Look Forward

January 14, 2019

With great honor, I assumed the ENT Division Treasurer position for the next 3-years term. It is a pleasing opportunity to serve our division as well as the responsibility to continue the great work of my predecessor, Dr. Marcos Hashimoto.

As a part of my introduction, I was looking back at the statements from 2012 to 2018 (Oct) to understand the financial position of our Division. In this review, we observe that the annual available funds are composed by the generous annual allocation from the AOM, the contributions from sponsorship (mostly universities, foundations and publishers), and others (balance forward from the previous year, annual meeting attendances, etc.). Particularly, we identify two interesting trends in the annual available funds. First, the annual AOM allocation increases 27% in the analyzed period. More concretely, we observed an annual increment of at least 5% in the last two years. Second, the sponsorship amount declined of 56% in the revised period with a dramatically reduction since 2015. This issue explained a charge in the ticket price of the Ent Division Social Meeting since 2014. Importantly, the sponsors’ contributions have remained almost constant during the last three years.

Regarding the annual operating expenses, we have seen an 80% increase in the total expenses from 2012 to 2018. The explanations of increment are the following ones. First, approximately 67% of the total annual expenses are linked with the Mid-winter and Annual meetings (social events, food and beverage). Specifically, this expense grew almost 90% in the revised period. One reason is the increasing prices associated with the conferences’ venues. For example, the 2018 Chicago annual meeting reported an increment of 11% in this expense in contrast to the expenses reported in the 2017 Atlanta annual meeting. Other reason includes the actions of the ENT Division to achieve the goal of capturing and disseminating doctoral, early career and mid-career consortia. Second, approximately 20% of the annual operating expenses are awards expenses. The awards expenses have increased 162% in this period. Remarkably, the awards expenses showed the highest increment of 39% in 2018.

Along this review, we have seen that the ENT Division with the support of AOM and sponsors has kept a good management of the incomes and expenses. To look forward, the available funds to our division on January 1, 2019 are $43,693.00 plus the balance forward from 2018. Moreover, this review is part of two financial reports that will be discussed by the Entrepreneurship Division Committee during the Mid-winter Meeting in Boca Raton (Florida). In my role, I hope to contribute to the division’s challenges and financial shape to be ready for the current goals and forthcoming projects.

All the best for the new entrepreneurial year!

Maribel Guerrero, ENT Division Treasurer

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