The following proposal has been put forward for consideration by John Unsworth, following on from his experience as Local Organiser of DH2007 at Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
One of the traditions of the ACH, ALLC and DH conferences and of SDH/SEMI and its conferences, is that the local organizer assumes all financial risk for the conference, and reaps any reward: except for specific awards and bursaries, which are directed to individuals, the Associations pay no conference subvention.
I propose that we change that tradition, and provide a modest subvention of about 5,000 USD, on the condition that the local organizer validates membership for those who register for the conference as members of ACH, SDH-SEMI, or ALLC. The rationale for this is simple: validating membership has the potential to inhibit registration and reduce the number of conference participants, which has a financial impact for the local organizer; the benefit of validating membership is realized by ADHO and its constituent associations, as it encourages people to keep their LLC subscriptions current, and (at least with the current fee structure for member/non- member registration) it encourages new membership as well.
Because it is in the interest of ADHO, not the local organizer, to validate membership, it seems appropriate for ADHO to provide a financial incentive to the local organizer for doing so. The subvention amount proposed is likely to be more than 5% but less than 10% of the cost of putting on the conference, which makes it meaningful without being excessive.
Subvention would be paid upon completion of the conference and receipt of a report specifying how many members and non-members registered, with valid membership numbers.