| The Society is financially sound, although we did not escape the
impact of the events of September 11, 2001. Our investments took an
$18,000 loss during the third quarter of last year, and although they
rebounded fairly well during the fourth quarter, our Society still
suffered a net income loss of over $6,000 for the year. Our total assets
dropped considerably, from over $287,000 at the end of the year 2000 to
less than $271,000 at the end of 2001. As far as I can tell, the main
proximate forces behind this drop were our investment losses, an
unexplained 75% drop in prepaid (i.e., for the year 2002) subscriptions
from non-U.S. institutions, and no reported income from the 2000 TCS
Summer meetings in Mazatlan. These latter two issues do not represent
systemic problems. The decline in the number of prepaid subscribers in
2001 did not presage a decline in the number of paid subscribers in 2002.
The Mazatlan meetings did yield income for the Society, but this did not
come to me in the form of a simple check, as in previous meetings, and
various complications slowed my efforts to deposit this income into our
account. Thus, it will appear in the books for the year 2002. |
| Given that publication of the Journal of Crustacean Biology is by far
the single greatest expense for TCS, it is gratifying to report a nearly
50% increase in income from page charges received in 2001. Most other
income categories did not change much from 2000 to 2001. It is a little
harder to compare expense categories between 2000 and 2001; there were no
Special Issues of JCB to be paid for in 2001, so JCB-related expenses
decreased. Notworthy were the 60% decrease in costs for back issue storage
and mailing costs for JCB, and the 40% decreases in costs associated with
The Ecdysiast. The Editor of JCB, Dr. David Camp, suggested that the TCS
Board authorize Allen Press to purge our substantial back issue holdings
(see the Editor's Report for more details), which should further reduce
back issue storage and mailing charges. On the other hand, we saw a nearly
50% increase in costs associated with Allen Press Marketing and
Management, which does not appear to be a temporary jump. |