Description

The Asia Program seeks approval of a discretionary grant of $5,700 to ASIANetwork (AN) to cover dues for member institutions that have requested a waiver as a result of financial pressure stemming from the pandemic.
I reached out to AN’s Executive Director Gary DeCoker in the spring to ask if the consortium was facing any financial hardship from COVID-19. I knew, for example, that AN’s spring 2020 conference had been cancelled and wondered about the impact on anticipated revenue. DeCoker replied that, fortunately, the conference hotel had allowed AN to reschedule its booking to 2021 [this has now been shifted to an even later date], resulting in minimal financial loss to the organization other than the revenue expected from conference registration fees. He suggested, however, that AN was concerned about the potential inability of its members to pay their annual dues for 2021. Over the course of our discussion, we arrived at the idea of HLF support for a fund to cover the dues of those unable to pay as a result of the pandemic. In the spring, the extent to which the virus might affect institutional budgets for academic year 2020-2021 was still unclear. Because the deadline for dues payment was not until September, we agreed that AN would offer a membership waiver option and we would revisit the situation in the fall.
AN annual dues are $300. The maximum request to HLF was calculated to be $48,000 if AN’s roughly 160 members took up the offer, although our expectation was that a much smaller number of institutions would request assistance. The Asia Program notified Mariko Silver of our intent and reserved $50,000 of its 2020 allocation for this possibility.
Each month over the summer and in September, AN notified its members of the waiver option. When the deadline for dues payment arrived in October, 19 institutions had requested a waiver, for a total of $5,700. Some of the reasons for their requests are included in the proposal. As DeCoker writes in his cover letter, interdisciplinary programs such as Asian studies are often more vulnerable to budget cuts than departments are.
AN’s mission is to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts education. With a modest budget derived primarily from a small endowment, grants and membership dues, and with largely volunteer service from the faculty of participating institutions, the organization offers a broad array of programs and resources to its members ( https://www.asianetwork.org/programs/ ). Its membership includes both elite liberal arts colleges and less resourced institutions ( https://www.asianetwork.org/membership/institutional-members/ ). HLF has two active grants to AN: for a postdoctoral teaching fellowship program, and for a program to create a digital resource guide on teaching about Asia and to assist colleges seeking outside advice on ways to strengthen the study of Asia on their campuses.
The recommended grant would allow AN members in need to maintain their memberships and avail themselves of AN’s programming at a time of financial stress.