Bubbles in the Bathtub

I just sent e-mails to all the people that contributed to the various SEATURTLE.ORG programs during 2004 to remind them that they could deduct their contribution from their taxes (sorry, US residents only). Adding up the numbers for the year got me thinking that it might be nice to share these numbers with the public in the interest of transparency. As a public charity SEATURTLE.ORG is required to make certain financial information available upon request, but no one has ever really requested it.

(please note that these are back-of-the-napkin figures for 2004, nothing is final until the accountant and the bookkeeper have submitted their reports for the year)

So, in 2004 SEATURTLE.ORG received 572 individual contributions for a total of $42,076. This total has not been corrected for about $2000 in fees related to credit card processing. The bulk of these contributions came in the form of adoptions of satellite tracked animals (427 adoptions for $18,710). Next are contributions to the Marine Turtle Newsletter (92 contributions for $16,595). This includes some large institutional "grants", but one $15,000 grant from NOAA to help cover print and distributions costs is not included in this total. The 92 individual contributions are very nice, but a bit disappointing given that the MTN is currently distributed to over 1500 people around the world. That means more than 1400 subscribers are not contributing (or fewer than 100 people are footing the bill for everyone else).

We launched a new African Sea Turtle Fund Drive in the late fall that generated $876 from 12 individuals during 2004. That particular effort has unfortunately taken a back seat to the more immediate needs of the Tsunami Fund. The Tsunami Fund started right at the end of the year and had brought in just $1075 when the year ended, $1000 of which is from SEATURTLE.ORG, which makes accounting a bit tricky. Three donations were received for the Marine Turtle Research Group's Darwin Project for a total of $1750.

That leaves 35 individual contributions for SEATURTLE.ORG totaling $3070, to help cover operating expenses. That's obviously not a lot of money, so a couple of years ago I started charging conferences a small fee for using the iConferences service that handles online conference registration (e.g. online registration for the Annual Sea Turtle Symposium and other conferences). It's hard to say right now how much this brought in during 2004 because registration for these events wrap around the fiscal year, but it was probably somewhere around $10,000.

So how does your money get spent?

You obviously want to know that your money is well spent and I do my best to make sure it is. There are almost no overhead expenses, no salaries, no insurance, no benefits, so as much money as possible is spent on programs and new resources. The only expenses that could be considered overhead are the obvious needs for good internet connections and computer equipment.

I'll work my way down the list...

Satellite tracking adoptions. Right off the top, half of all tracking adoptions are sent to the individual tracking projects. In 2004 that was over $9,000, a small amount of which was donated back to SEATURTLE.ORG. About 5% vanishes in credit card fees and another 7.5% goes to postage and material costs for the adoption packets. The remainder goes in to the SEATURTLE.ORG tracking fund. Last year we were able to use this fund to help purchase 10 satellite tags for a project in Cape Verde.

Marine Turtle Newsletter. It costs between $25,000 and $30,000 for printing and mailing the MTN. We actually brought in about $10K more than we spent for the MTN this year, so we are hoping to begin paying a small stipend to one of the MTN editors, who expends a huge amount of time and effort in putting together each issue.

Fund Drives. Money raised during both the African Sea Turtle Fund and the Tsunami Fund are specifically ear-marked for those purposes. The African Sea Turtle Fund will fund a research and conservation grants program for African sea turtles. The Tsunami Fund will help rebuild research and conservation programs affected by the December tsunami in the Indian Ocean and SE Asia. Funds raised for the MTRG's Darwin Project are also specially ear-marked for that project.

That leaves about $13,000+ for operating expenses and equipment. This includes things like accounting (~$1,100), public relations and outreach (~$2000), computer and internet expenses (~$2500), merchant account/credit card fees (~$5,500), phone (~$2,000) and travel to meetings (~$1,700).

Our accountant tells me that we came out $740 ahead during 2004. And that's that.