Financial matters ESERA Board and LOC

This page outlines the financial relationship between ESERA and the Local Organising Committee (LOC) of ESERA Conferences and ESERA Summer Schools.

1. Collaboration and Shared Responsibility – the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the ESERA Conference and ESERA Summer School work in collaboration with the ESERA Board to develop and agree on budgets for these events. An important part of the budget are the conference or summer school registration fees, which are set at an appropriate level to encourage broad participation of science education researchers. The income generated by conference fees and local sponsoring is meant to roughly balance the expenses of organizing the event. The Conference Financial Guidelines provide additional information on commitments. The main principle is that the Board and the LOC share the responsibility of organizing a successful event that provides good value for all participants from a range of countries.

2. Planning budget – ESERA offers the LOC a planning budget of €1,000 to be retransferred to ESERA after the conference or summer school. The LOC can, of course, decide not to make use of this offer.

3. Fellowships budget – The ESERA Conference offers financial support to researchers from countries where support for attending scientific conferences is not adequate. Specific eligibility criteria apply for these fellowships, which are announced openly on the conference website. The total budget for ESERA Conference Fellowships is normally around €25,000 (1) and is covered as part of the Conference Budget.

4. Support for ESERA Summer Schools – the ESERA Board offers the LOC of an ESERA Summer School a budget of maximum € 18,750 (1), for financial support for covering a) the fee and travel expenses of the participants acting as mentors during the summer school, and b) costs directly related to the event itself. The LOC is encouraged to seek additional sponsorship for financial support of Summer School participants.

4. Requests for support to the LOC – Amounts approved by the ESERA Board will be transferred to the LOC before the event on request only. A request should be addressed by letter or email to the ESERA treasurer (for name and address, see the ESERA website), stating the necessary details.

5. Transfers to ESERA – Amounts that need to be transferred to ESERA, such as membership fees or in the event of a surplus, are expected to be transferred by the LOC within three months of the completion of the event. The transfer process is agreed in advance with the ESERA Treasurer (2).

5. Membership information – If necessary, details about ESERA membership of individuals will be made available to the LOC on request. It is the responsibility of the LOC to safeguard that these details are not used for any other purpose than the organization of the event and that any use does not violate the terms under which members provided this information.

6. Conference and Summerschool participation and fees – ESERA’s policy is that every participant to the conference and/or summerschool is active member in the year that the event is organized. The ESERA membership fees are collected by the ESERA association and fall outside the conference and/or summerschool budget. The LOC  and ESERA Board together determine appropriate registration fees for conferences and summerschools on the basis of agreed upon budgets.

Continuous ESERA members, i.e. members also being active ESERA member in the year preceding the conference, pay the set conference fee as indicated in the Table below, where € xxx and € yyy stand for early bird registration fee for Members or Student members, respectively. Non-continuous ESERA members pay a surcharge on top of the set conference fees.  The surcharges are collected by the LOC upon conference registration, but do not  count as part of the conference budget. The total amount of  collected surcharges is transferred in full to ESERA after the conference. Please note that discounts and/or surcharges to the registration fee only hold for conferences, not for summerschools (3).