Conjose Mails Membership Reimbursements
01/08/2004 . Source: Jessica Martin 

ConJose, the 2002 World Science Fiction Convention, issued reimbursements to qualified volunteers, staff, committee, and program participants beginning in late May 2003.

ConJose, the 2002 World Science Fiction Convention, issued reimbursements to qualified volunteers, staff, committee, and program participants beginning in late May 2003.

The convention issued reimbursements in batches, and mailed the last major batch of reimbursements on Thursday, June 19, 2003 from San Jose, California.

Anyone who believes they are due a refund who has not received a refund or other contact from ConJose by July 15, 2003 should write to the convention Treasurer, Cindy Scott, at the convention address (PO Box 61363, Sunnyvale CA 94088-1363 USA) or e-mail her at controller@conjose.org.

After paying all of its other bills, ConJose had a sufficient surplus to be able to pay traditional reimbursements. Through June 30, 2003, ConJose had issued 690 payments to volunteers, staff, committee, and program participants.

Total reimbursement payments through that date were US$96,473.

The convention began to distribute reimbursements at a ConJose Thank-You Party held at BayCon 2003 in San Jose. After that, as batches of checks were completed, the convention sent members in the USA checks in US dollars by first class mail.

Members outside the USA were reimbursed in their local currency through one of the convention's agents whenever it was practical, unless arranged otherwise with ConJose's Treasurer.

Because reimbursement checks were processed in batches, ConJose elected to distribute each batch as it was finished rather than hold up payment for some members while waiting for future batches to be finished.

As a result, not everyone entitled to reimbursement received his/her payment at the same time.

ConJose is still researching a few reimbursement payments to confirm the payment amounts or to resolve other issues.

Because of this, the final amount of reimbursements paid will be slightly higher than the total reported above.

The final payments will be to the convention co-Chairs, Tom Whitmore and Kevin Standlee, who pledged that they would not be reimbursed until the other qualified members had been paid.

In a letter distributed with reimbursements, Whitmore and Standlee wrote,

"Thank you for contributing your time, your effort, and your creativity to ConJose. We're hoping the tangible thanks of a refund will remind you that we really appreciated what you did. Each one of you contributed, and it would have been a different con without you."

ConJose reimbursed membership fees, including, if applicable, any Advance Supporting Membership (voting) fees collected in the 2002 Worldcon site selection election, and any pre-supporting membership fees paid to the Bay Area in 2002 Worldcon Bid Committee.

Like almost all other Worldcons, all members of ConJose, including the committee, staff, and program participants, were required to buy memberships.

Worldcon committees are legally and financially independent from each other, and have no inherent right to share each other's surpluses other than through the Pass-Along Funds mechanism, nor are they responsible for each other's liabilities.

Because of this, most Worldcons require all members except the Guests of Honor to buy memberships. Traditionally, North American Worldcons with sufficient surplus to do so refund memberships to program participants and volunteers.

As required by the World Science Fiction Society, ConJose will present a financial report to the WSFS Business Meeting at Torcon 3 detailing the convention's financial status.

ConJose also plans to host Thank-You Parties at Westercon 56 in Seattle and at Torcon 3 in Toronto.

Having completed traditional membership reimbursements, ConJose is currently planning a mailing of convention membership materials to its supporting members and attending members who were unable to attend the convention.

ConJose expects to complete this mailing in July or August 2003. The convention originally projected this mailing for June 2003, and apologizes for any inconvenience this delay caused.

The 2002 Worldcon, known as ConJose, took place at the McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, California from 29 August through 2 September 2002.

More information about ConJose is available from its web site at www.conjose.org or by writing to info@conjose.org.

Jessica Martin