LPC Blog

The Library Publishing Coalition Blog is used to share news and updates about the LPC and the Library Publishing Forum, to draw attention to items of interest to the community, and to publish informal commentaries by LPC members and friends.

September 20, 2024

Reporting out on the finances of the 2024 Library Publishing Forum

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This is the third of three planned report-outs on this year’s Library Publishing Forum. The other two were on our COVID policy and on the closing plenary discussion. Check them out! 

Conference finances are tricky – ask anyone who has ever planned a multi-day, in-person event. Costs are sometimes unpredictable and revenues almost always are. The last four years have added additional complexities for many conference planners, including wildly fluctuating attendance and binding hotel contracts for events that were forced to go virtual. Conference finances also tend to be somewhat mysterious to attendees, who can be left wondering what their registration fees actually cover and whether the event is intended to break even or to make money for its organizers.  We at LPC are big fans of transparency, so we have decided to report out publicly on the financial details of the Library Publishing Forum. We did this once before (as part of a series of reflections on the 2021 virtual Forum), but our plan is to make it a regular component of Forum planning going forward. To that end, this post will report out on the finances for the in-person Forum held in May of 2024 in Minneapolis, MN. We hope that this post will serve as a resource for fellow conference planners, as well as helping our community better understand the decisions we make around the event.

Breaking even

The Library Publishing Forum has never been a revenue-generating activity for LPC. Our goals have always been to 1) put on a good conference that is affordable for attendees, and 2) not lose money on it. We have kept registration rates extremely low by holding our conferences in inexpensive campus venues; bringing in as many sponsor dollars as possible; and keeping everything on a shoestring budget except for the food. We don’t need a fancy venue, but if we don’t keep everyone fed and caffeinated, we WILL hear about it from attendees.

Our cautious budgeting plus our consistently growing list of attendees meant that, before the pandemic, we frequently made a small profit on the Forum, which went into LPC’s operating reserve. Since 2020, however, the pattern has been that our virtual conference years make a profit, and our in-person events go over budget. Since we have now settled into a steady pattern of alternating in-person and virtual conferences, our new goal is to break even across a two-year span. That means that we are OK with losing some money on an in-person conference if we can make it up the next year on a virtual conference. Spoiler: we did NOT manage that this year.

Revenue

The Forum has two sources of revenue: sponsorships and registrations. We are lucky to have a loyal group of sponsoring organizations who have stuck with us as we have transitioned from 100% in-person events to alternating years with virtual. Most Forum sponsorships are around $1k, so we’re not bringing in a huge amount of money, but it’s enough to make a significant dent in the event costs.

As mentioned above, our registration rates are as low as we can possibly make them. For in-person events, that has meant $300 standard registration, with each LPC member institution entitled to two $200 registrations. For virtual events, we charge $25 per registration, with a no-questions-asked waiver available.

The revenue breakdown for this year’s in-person Forum was:

  • Sponsorship: $10,000
  • Registration (154 attendees, minus Eventbrite fees): $30,847.38
  • TOTAL: $40,847.38

Expenses

Aside from the expected venue, catering, and staffing costs that you would encounter with any in-person event, our biggest expenditures are design, keynote support, and materials (including masks and COVID tests). Here’s the full breakdown:

  • Venue (for both the Forum and the reception; also including A/V costs): $10,710.00
  • Catering (includes two breakfast; two box lunch; snacks; drinks, cupcakes, and hors d’oeuvres for reception): $23,935.82
  • Staffing (including staff travel to Minneapolis and hourly pay for staff who don’t normally work with LPC): $6,531.36
  • Keynote (includes honorarium and travel support): $1,550.66
  • Materials:
    • COVID mitigation (includes tests, masks, 4 Corsi-Rosenthal boxes): $1,596.54
    • Other materials (including printing and shipping): $948.64
  • Design: $3,500.00
  • Other costs (including accommodation for staff and keynote, Forum scholarship costs, Sched): $5,888.00
  • TOTAL: $54,261.02

The bottom line

Clearly, we did NOT break even on the in-person, and the $5,451.71 surplus we made on last year’s virtual event didn’t come close to making up the shortfall. It’s difficult to predict registration trends, but at this point it feels safe to assume that around 150 attendees is our new normal for in-person Forums. That means that, in order to break even in future, we will probably need to do one or more of the following:

  1. Raise registration fees for in-person conferences: This wouldn’t be unreasonable (given that registration fees have literally never changed), and we have quite a bit of wiggle room before we even get close to the fees for peer conferences.
  2. Increase sponsorship dollars: We aren’t currently staffed to do major sponsorship outreach or to develop new sponsor benefits, so this probably isn’t feasible in the near term. In the longer term, our community appreciates that sponsors aren’t central to the event, and that the ones who attend are there as colleagues – not just vendors. We would need to tread carefully with any changes to this program.
  3. Reduce costs for in-person conferences: There are a number of cost-cutting approaches we could explore, like not serving a hot breakfast, or holding the Forum in a no-cost venue (like a library). They all come with trade-offs, but we will certainly be looking very closely at all of our decisions for 2026!
  4. Aim for a bigger margin on virtual conferences: Even with very low registration costs, we tend to make a small surplus on our virtual conferences. We could increase the attendee cost for the virtual event to subsidize the in-person event, but a bigger margin isn’t a guarantee and it would undercut one of the main benefits of the virtual event – its accessibility.

 

#1 and #3 are the most feasible, so we will likely be exploring those over the next year. Any changes we make to the Forum to improve its sustainability will be decided in consultation with the LPC community. We will reach out for feedback when we have a specific question or proposal, but in the meantime, we encourage community members to think about your own Forum experiences and share your thoughts on how you would like to see this program move forward.