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Develop reserve fund policies - The purpose of the arXiv reserve fund is to support unexpected expenses to ensure a sound business model. Currently, arXiv has a reserve fund of approximately $125$100,000 accumulated during the last two years 2010-2011 due to unexpected staff vacancies and other savings, such as transition to virtual servers (2012 expenses have not been factored in yet). The includes a contingency line (2013-2017 budget projections factor in a contingency fund with $50,000-$100,000 per year ); however, the Cumulative Operating Contingency balance does not factor in the potential expenditures that will be charged against this account in support of unforeseen expenses. We will discuss the desirability of establishing a minimum and maximum contingency fund levels. The financial projections assume that the membership fees will increase at an average rate of 2 % per year. Ideally, membership fees should decrease as the number of participating institutions increases. This is one of the reasons we would like to identify an ideal contingency amount so that we will know when to stop accumulating and start reducing membership fees. additions. We need to develop policies about how contingency funds will be used and how the account will be structured (e.g., funds needed for closing the business versus development funds - also a part of the reserve funds to create an endowment & the interest can be use the interest for reducing membership fees). Also, we need to determine at what point of reserve fund accumulation (total reserve balance) we will consider to lower the annual membership fees.
New Partnerships & Communication
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