How much does it cost to put on an in-person conference?

An in-person annual meeting typically costs about $400,000 to produce. This is more than a third of ASA’s total annual budget, and does not include staff time (planning and producing the conference takes at least half of our time each year). A good annual meeting for ASA has historically meant breaking even, and as costs continue to rise that balancing act becomes increasingly tenuous. Hotels with appropriate meeting space are the industry standard for a conference of our type and size. As part of our contracts with these hotels, ASA must commit to booking a certain number of room nights at the hotel in exchange for meeting space. If our members and attendees do not use at least 80 percent of our contractually obligated hotel room block (and sometimes more, depending on the contract), ASA is on the hook for all unused rooms in the block. For example, although our 2024 attendance numbers were consistent with previous post-pandemic conferences, in 2024 enough members either did not stay at the hotel or canceled room nights at the last minute, and ASA was subject to substantial financial penalties from the hotel in Baltimore.

Can’t we just cancel the in-person conference and have a virtual conference instead?

We cannot be released from our contracts for hotel, convention center, and catering services through 2027, barring calamities such as environmental disasters or pandemics. As a result, the cost of not producing an in-person conference ends up being far greater than producing one (hotel contracts alone make us liable for $500,000-$600,000), and simply eating these costs would be financially devastating for the ASA. The bottom line is that for now, at least, we have to hold in-person conferences and we need participants to lodge at the conference hotel(s) if we are to remain solvent and continue to serve scholars and the field.

I’m worried about funding or traveling to the US. Can’t you hold a hybrid conference?

Hybrid events, especially conferences with many concurrent sessions such as ours, are expensive, onerous for staff and volunteers, and difficult to execute. Due to steep additional costs for technology and staff time – and the financial losses incurred if people don’t attend physically, as described above – the true cost of a hybrid conference is many times more than what we can ask our members to pay in terms of registration rates. Hybrid conferences also split attendance in such a way that the in-person meeting loses some of the vitality associated with a single, unified event and compromises our goals of creating sustained intellectual community amongst scholars.

In sum, “hybrid” would effectively commit the organization to operating a lower quality conference at a significant financial loss, endangering the future of the association. As fiduciaries – officers and directors of a non-profit organization are legally required to make decisions and operate in the best interests of the association and its membership – we cannot do this.

Can you run a virtual conference in addition to the in-person conference so that international members who can’t travel to the US and members who have lost funding can participate?

Running a virtual conference in addition to the in-person conference is not ideal for the reasons described above, but may be necessary to ensure that members for whom it may not be safe to travel and/or who are experiencing the withdrawal of financial support are able to participate. For the 2025 Annual Meeting, the ASA may consider producing a smaller virtual conference in addition to the in-person meeting in order to facilitate the participation of:

• International members who are unable to secure travel visas;
• International and other members residing in the US who may be advised against traveling even domestically;
• Members with disability-related access needs; and
• Members whose travel funding has been eliminated by their institutions.

If we do add a virtual conference, it will not take place concurrently with the in-person conference. Any decisions will be made in the late Summer or early Fall, based on a clearer picture of the situation in the US and globally at that time.

Can ASA help make it viable for more members to attend the in-person conference?

Yes! Rather than pivot to a virtual or hybrid format, we are focusing on how to ensure that as many members as possible are able to attend the conference in person in San Juan.

The ASA awards many times more money in travel grants to significantly more attendees than other associations in the humanities and social sciences. In 2024, we awarded 40 travel grants. Yet we are also acutely aware that this year in particular, the need is even greater. We are are already planning to double last year’s number and have awarded 86 travel grants for eligible members. We hope to award additional Baxter and Solidarity Travel grants later in the year depending on need and association resources, and may reopen applications later in the year. We are working on several things to free-up funding:

• ASA is planning to scale back on our previously maximalist approach to audio/visual technology this year (and are confident this will not negatively impact the quality of the conference experience). A/V is shockingly expensive (last year we spent $130,000 on conference AV alone!), and cutting back may enable us to fund additional travel grants.
• We are encouraging members who have the means to donate to the Baxter & Solidarity travel grant funds. All donations go directly to travel grants (no overhead). So far, we have received enough donations from members to provide 6 additional travel grants beyond the 80 funded directly by ASA. Please consider donating to the Solidarity and/or Baxter travel grant funds if you can.
• This year we are updating our conference registration fees for the first time since 2017. The registration fee structure is sliding scale, based on household income. We still do not expect conference income to cover all of our conference expenses, but we are moving to keep pace with inflation and marginally close the gap. We encourage members to register at the highest level with which they are comfortable considering their income, access to family wealth, and access to institutional resources. The highest registration rate enables us to subsidize members’ registration at the lower levels. If enough members register at the higher rates, we may also be able to fund additional travel grants (including recipients’ registration waivers).
• We are also looking at other ways to designate another small pool of ASA reserve funds for travel grants.

Why not spend the money we expect to save on AV costs in 2025 to fund a hybrid conference?

The costs are not 1 to 1, meaning we would still be significantly challenged financially by running a hybrid conference. And we would also lose some of the community-building and relational benefits of in-person conferencing. A handful of members have been given permission to participate virtually for reasons related to disability access and/or emergency conditions affecting travel. The number of these permissions is extremely small and is not at a scale that tips the conference into hybrid terrain.

What might ASA future conferences look like? Can we do things differently?

We have inherited a conference model based on mid- to late-20th century assumptions about higher education and about the world. We all know that academia is not the same as it was then and that – for better or worse – we face continued dramatic and transformative changes to the sector as a whole, and our work in particular, as higher ed reckons with the enrollment cliff, financial pressures, artificial intelligence, vicious defunding efforts, and politically motivated attacks to outlaw critical analysis of American political, social, and cultural institutions, ideologies, and practices. It may be time to rethink the model of the conference that has risen alongside the ascendency of the neo-liberal university. Is a multi-day annual meeting structured entirely around traditional academic formats in a corporate hotel sustainable? And, more importantly, does it reflect who and what we want to be in the world? What structures of meeting will support and sustain the intellectual community that we strive to cultivate and the relationships with one another and with communities of practice that we need moving forward? How do the ways that we come together to think in community serve what we are trying to do with our research, our teaching, our communities of collaboration, learning, teaching, dissent, organizing, and building? What needs to shift in order for our conferencing to better meet our needs?

While we cannot simply transform our model and practices overnight, these are questions we need to think through. In the months ahead, we will be initiating dialogue about innovating and evolving conferencing to meet the needs of American Studies scholars and practitioners in the decades ahead. We hope you will join with us in that conversation.

As a vital home for American Studies work, we strive for the association to be both flexible and sustainable. We are endeavoring to be creative, compassionate, and adaptive in our conference planning while also ensuring that our small non-profit association remains financially solvent and staff are not entirely overwhelmed. As ever, our goal is to ensure that the ASA can continue our work with and for you.