(Organizational) Death and Taxes: SFWA's Filings Hit the Internet
With the nation’s collective hides still stinging from our annual visit to the tax office, now couldn’t be a better time to toss a few more logs onto the SFWA dumpster fire and enjoy a good laugh. Because as it turns out, their most recent Form 990s have recently been posted to the somewhat notorious OnA Forums.
The website, which was the target of a failed lawsuit by Patrick S. Tomlinson last year, posted links to the documents in their literary criticism thread. I’m no forensic accountant, but what emerges from these filings is a picture of an organization whose practices run counter to growth, incapable of building on what meager successes they do manage to win. In their rush to raise acts of politically correct piety above actual, true inclusiveness, they ostracize more and more potential members even as they find themselves desperate for membership fees. This last point, in my estimation, is very likely the motivation behind their recent easing of their membership requirements, which I’ll go into a bit later. I’ll go into the major data points of the past few years’ forms, but if you feel like checking them out yourselves, here are the links:
The Barrel Has No Bottom
A March 23 post on that well-known wretched hive of scum and villainy announced that SFWA members had voted “overwhelmingly” to lower the bar for entry even further. Among the new guidelines are two major alterations to the Full and Associate Membership tiers; for Full, an applicant’s total body of published, fully authored or co-authored share of work must total at least $1,000 or a mere $100 for an Associate Member. Gone is the requirement that said published work need be attained at a professional rate of .08c /word, or be published through a major market or independent press. Two stories sold to magazines such as Cirsova or Occult Detective, each of which have per word rates that would have previously precluded you from entry to SF/F's most ivory of towers, would now net you enough in sales to attain membership. As long as you’ve got a sworn affidavit and your check clears, you’re as good as on their rolls. (Oh, and the Associate Membership rate was raised to $100 per year).
Why would they do this? If you ask me, it’s because they’re in the red. The most recently available tax documents filed by SFWA show that they’re on the tail end of an up and down financial roller coaster.
Up, Down, Up: 2017 - 2019
SFWA’s had its share of financial struggles before, but a look at the returns from 2018 show just about every positive financial data point cratering. Their total revenue went from $552,397 in 2017 to barely over a third of that in 2018 ($185,528). Total revenue went from a balance of $158,959 in 2017 to being -$15,098 in the red the next year. Liabilities almost quadrupled. 2018 was an unmitigated disaster, financially speaking, by virtually every metric. Then came a hell of an upswing in 2019.
The group’s financial fortunes seem to reverse wholly according to 2019’s filings; total revenue was back to a healthy over-half-million mark to $539,335. But the expense columns show that a lot of that windfall was eaten away by ballooning expenses. Salaries went up by almost $100,000 alone. In all, total expenses more than doubled from $200,624 in 2018 to $497,098 in 2019. While they would rally out from being $15k in the hole, they’d finish the year out $42,237 in the black, which considering the huge amounts they had coming in isn’t anything to pop the champagne over. And then 2020 hit, and SFWA was in for a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year.
F'n it all up: 2020
In March, less than three months out from the Nebula Awards, SFWA’s hosting hotel refused to allow them to cancel the event and refused to offer refunds. The Nebulas eventually had to resort to streaming online. The 55th Annual Nebula Showcase anthology published later that year was also blasted for only containing one full story that was actually nominated for a Nebula award.
That summer the organization had to institute an anti-email harvesting policy after absolute mad lad member Zirc McCree used his access to the Member Directory as his personal database to send out promo emails for his book. They rounded out the year by virtue signaling about the DisneyMustPay hashtag to indeterminate success, and ended the year on a high note by managing to somehow confer the Damon Knight Grand Master award to someone who as not a suspected sexual deviant.
With the entire world being on pause and the org still managing to somehow fumble ass-backwards through a half-dozen self-inflicted mishaps that wound up pissing off their members, it should come as no surprise that they’d gone from $42,237 worth of revenue from 2019 to a -$2,169 loss. The money roller coaster was very well and truly back in a dip.
Quantity Over Quality
2021’s forms aren’t available yet, and given the all-too-well documented legal troubles that occurred during that year, those filings should make for a very entertaining read indeed.
The group’s inability to turn a profit during a year when the entire world had little more to do than sit home and consume entertainment (books very much included) speaks to an organizational dysfunction that extends well beyond what a spreadsheet can tell.
The roller coaster isn’t going up, it’s run out of rail and about to fly off a cliff. So they’ve relaxed their admissions requirements (again) because they want your money. Don’t give it to them.
UPDATE (4/26): A prior draft of this article said the Hugo Awards were associated with SFWA. They are not. The mention has been removed.